Could this be the nightmare Pakistan’s army never saw coming? Wedged between India to the east and Afghanistan to the west, Pakistan long assumed it could manage hostility on one front while keeping the other pliant. It never imagined it might face pressure from both sides at once.
Islamabad remains on high alert after the four-day war with India. At the same time, it is facing an intensifying campaign of attacks by the Pakistan Taliban, or Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), whose fighters strike quickly inside Pakistan and then scurry back across the border into Afghanistan.
That reality helps explain a question that would once have seemed unthinkable in New Delhi: why is India becoming friendlier with Afghanistan’s deeply Islamist Taliban government? The answer, perhaps, lies in a line from China’s reformist supreme leader Deng Xiaoping: “It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.” Or, as the old proverb goes, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
India has historically viewed the Taliban with deep suspicion, and with good reason. One need only look at the Haqqani family, among the most powerful figures in the Taliban government. The Haqqanis were almost certainly behind many of the terror attacks in Kabul during the years of insurgency, including the 2008 bombing of the Indian embassy in which one diplomat was killed.
The family was so closely linked to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence that it was sometimes seen as an unofficial arm of the ISI, carrying out deniable operations on its behalf.
Today, Sirajuddin Haqqani serves as the Taliban’s interior minister. His brother, Khalil ur Rehman Haqqani, was minister for refugees until he was killed by a suicide bomber in December 2024. Half a dozen other family members occupy key positions in the government, giving the clan sweeping influence over internal security and law and order.
Can India trust a government dominated by such figures? Ordinarily, the answer would be no. But this is also a moment of opportunity, and a good time for India to make its moves. Pakistan is furious with the Afghans and has even bombed Kabul, Jalalabad and Khost in recent months, blaming attacks it says are being launched from across the border.
One research organisation, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, estimates there have been more than 600 Pakistan Taliban attacks in the past year, mostly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and parts of Balochistan.
Pakistan accuses the Afghan government of backing not only the TTP but also the Balochistan Liberation Army. Qatar, and later Türkiye, have unsuccessfully attempted to bring the two sides together, but peace talks have had only limited impact. Islamabad also claims that India is covertly financing militant groups that government forces are battling inside Pakistan.
On Wednesday, Pakistan’s all-powerful army chief, General Asim Munir, again heaped blame on India for the armed struggle in Balochistan, declaring: “Indian-sponsored proxies continue to propagate violence and disrupt development in Balochistan.”
The government has announced that all militant organisations operating in the province will be collectively labelled “Fitna-al-Hindustan”, roughly translated as India’s mischief or sedition.
No country has formally recognised Afghanistan’s Taliban government. But China and Russia are moving swiftly to expand their influence there. India, meanwhile, is seizing the moment by sending “technical” missions and pledging assistance to rebuild Afghanistan’s shattered economy and infrastructure.
Most Indian aid, including wheat, vaccines and medicines, now reaches Afghanistan via Iran’s Chabahar port. The route is longer, but it allows Indian supplies to bypass Pakistan entirely.
As one analyst puts it: “India began quietly re-establishing ties with the Taliban through humanitarian assistance, both to prevent Afghanistan from re-emerging as a hub for terrorism that could threaten its security and to position itself as a strategic partner, incentivising cooperation with India over Pakistan or China.”
Still, India’s ability to build its position in the country will depend in part on whether Pakistan is able to work itself back into a position of influence in Kabul. As another analyst notes: “India’s success in increasing its influence in Afghanistan relative to its rivals will hinge on some interlinked variables, including Pakistan’s ability to rebuild trust with the Taliban.”
As analysts such as Derek Grossman argue in Nikkei Asia, India needs to “engage directly, but in a quiet and incremental way, which should offer India some benefits without the risk of major harm to its strategic position.” Otherwise, he warns, “the alternative policy of shunning Afghanistan’s rulers would virtually ensure less Taliban concern about anti-India terrorism and allow Chinese and Pakistani influence to grow unchecked.”
Pakistan-Afghanistan relations, it is worth remembering, have long been uneasy. Shortly after Pakistan was created, the British civil servant and historian William Kerr Fraser-Tytler predicted that Afghanistan would eventually be absorbed by Pakistan, peacefully or otherwise. “History suggests that fusion will take place, if not peacefully, then by force,” he wrote.
Pakistan’s first military ruler, Ayub Khan, later sought to create a religion-based federation with Afghanistan. He went further still, proposing a “grand confederation” of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Turkey, which he believed would allow Pakistan to counterbalance India.
The confederation idea was a non-starter. It was followed by a military concept that has long puzzled analysts: strategic depth. Under this doctrine, a Pakistani army defeated by India would retreat into Afghanistan to regroup. Inevitably, this implied abandoning Pakistan’s civilian population in order to rebuild military strength across the border before taking on its enemy again.
For India, dealing with Afghanistan’s rulers remains a careful balancing act. Afghanistan’s Taliban regime is among the most repressive in the world. Girls have been barred from even basic education, and women have been pushed out of jobs they held before the Taliban takeover and banned from parks.
During a visit to Delhi, Taliban foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi initially refused to meet women journalists, before being forced into an awkward and publicly humiliating climbdown. Engagement with such a government carries obvious moral and political costs. But these may be costs India has little choice but to confront and manage in a volatile and rapidly shifting regional landscape.