Islamabad, Pakistan \u2013\u00a0<\/strong>On October 28 after negotiators from Pakistan and Afghanistan hit a wall in talks to extend their fragile ceasefire after deadly border clashes, Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Asif blamed a third country that wasn\u2019t even present during the dialogue: India.<\/p>\n In a television interview, Asif claimed that India had \u201cpenetrated\u201d the Afghan Taliban leadership. That, he insisted, was the reason for the escalation in tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan.<\/span><\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n He complimented the Taliban leadership at the talks in Istanbul. \u201cBut the people in Kabul pulling the strings and staging the puppet show are being controlled by Delhi,\u201d Asif charged. \u201cIndia wants to engage in a low-intensity war with Pakistan. To achieve this, they are using Kabul.\u201d<\/p>\n The defence minister presented no evidence to back his claim that India was propping up the Taliban to challenge Pakistan. But his comments represent a growing attempt by Pakistan to portray its tensions with Afghanistan as the outcome of a growing friendship between the Taliban and India.<\/p>\n As Pakistani and Afghan troops were clashing along the border earlier in the month, Asif said the Taliban was \u201csitting in India\u2019s lap\u201d. Islamabad has accused the Taliban of allowing anti-Pakistan armed groups like the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) to operate from Afghan soil and has claimed \u2013 again without public evidence \u2013 that India is behind the TTP.<\/p>\n The Taliban leadership has rejected the accusation that India has had any role in the crisis between Pakistan and Afghanistan and has denied any responsibility in the TTP\u2019s repeated attacks on Pakistani soil.<\/p>\n Still, analysts said, the decision by Pakistani leaders like Asif to invoke India as an alleged shadowy villain pulling the strings of the Taliban underscores the deep unease in Islamabad over ties between New Delhi and Kabul. For Pakistan, wedged between Afghanistan to the west and India to the east, New Delhi\u2019s expanding footprint in Kabul is a source of deep suspicion.<\/p>\n As Pakistani and Afghan negotiators prepare to meet in Istanbul on Thursday for the next round of talks that Qatar and Turkiye are mediating, India is increasingly the elephant in the room, analysts said.<\/p>\n When a magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck northern Afghanistan on Monday, one of the first countries to offer aid was India.<\/p>\n Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar phoned his Taliban counterpart, Amir Khan Muttaqi, and New Delhi shipped 15 tonnes of food to quake-hit Balkh and Samangan provinces. Medical supplies, he said, would follow soon.<\/p>\n Jaishankar\u2019s outreach came just a few days after Muttaqi completed a six-day visit to India, the first by an Afghan Taliban leader to New Delhi since the group seized power for a second time in Kabul in August 2021.<\/p>\n The visit also underscored a wider re-engagement between India and the Taliban in recent years, capped by New Delhi\u2019s decision last month to reopen its embassy in Kabul.<\/p>\n The regional landscape is very different from four years ago when the Afghan Taliban returned to power. At that time, India had paused most of its diplomatic operations in Afghanistan while Pakistan\u2019s influence in Kabul was widely seen as having increased.<\/p>\n For years, Pakistan had been the Taliban\u2019s primary patron. India, for its part, long regarded the Taliban as a Pakistani proxy. It accused the group and its allies of repeatedly targeting Indian diplomatic posts in Kabul, Jalalabad, Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif from 2001 to 2021 when the Taliban was out of power and was fighting US forces and the Afghan governments that Western troops supported.<\/p>\n Islamabad\u2019s longstanding doctrine of \u201cstrategic depth\u201d is rooted in the military\u2019s desire to wield leverage in Afghanistan and blunt India\u2019s influence in South Asia.<\/p>\n Since 2021, however, the Taliban have pursued a more conciliatory posture towards New Delhi.<\/p>\n C Raja Mohan,\u00a0a former member of India\u2019s National Security Advisory Board, recently wrote in his column for Foreign Policy magazine<\/a> that India\u2019s re-engagement with Kabul since 2021 has been \u201ccautious, pragmatic and deliberately quiet\u201d.<\/p>\n This shift, however, has unnerved Islamabad, especially as Pakistan now faces security threats on both its borders.<\/p>\n The Pahalgam attack in April, which killed at least 26 people in Indian-administered Kashmir and for which India blamed Pakistan-based groups, became a flashpoint.<\/p>\n India\u2019s retaliation two weeks later escalated tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals and resulted in a four-day conflict in May.<\/p>\n Five days after a ceasefire, Jaishankar called Muttaqi to express his appreciation for Afghanistan\u2019s condemnation of the Pahalgam attack and to reiterate support for Afghan development.<\/p>\n \u201cUnderlined our traditional friendship with the Afghan people and continuing support for their development needs. Discussed ways and means of taking cooperation forward,\u201d the Indian external affairs minister wrote on his X account.<\/a><\/p>\n After clashing with India in May, Pakistan also engaged in a weeklong fight with Afghanistan that took place while Muttaqi was visiting India.<\/p>\n The fighting eventually ended through a ceasefire, which was mediated by Qatar and Turkiye over two rounds of talks in Doha and Istanbul. But the peace remains tenuous at best.<\/p>\n Yet some analysts argued Pakistan\u2019s concerns reflect longstanding strategic anxieties rather than recent developments with Afghanistan.<\/p>\n Amina Khan of the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad said Pakistan had expected the Taliban not to create \u201cspace or vacuum\u201d for India, an expectation that has not been met.<\/p>\n Khan noted that the recent visit by Muttaqi to India resulted in strong statements that were issued not only by the Afghan government but also Indian officials, which led to an increase in Pakistani apprehensions.<\/p>\n Randhir Jaiswal, spokesperson for the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, in news briefings last month said that while India was closely monitoring the Pakistan-Afghanistan border tensions, it was Pakistan\u2019s \u201cold practice\u201d to blame its neighbours for its internal failures.<\/p>\nRecommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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