Post-August 2021, unlike China, Russia, Iran, and the Central Asian Republics, India evacuated all its diplomats from Afghanistan and closed its embassy and consulates across the country. This overnight change was perceived as India’s loss in Afghanistan vis-à-vis its arch geopolitical rival Pakistan. During this period, the Indian government under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership had no clear policy toward the Taliban. At the same time, Indian policymakers were divided into two groups regarding engagement with the ruling Taliban.

The first group, aligned with Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India’s foreign minister, favored political engagement with the Taliban. The second group, aligned with the late General Bipin Rawat, India’s Chief of Defence Staff, supported aiding anti-Taliban groups and continuing the proxy war. This conflict of ideas continued until a cabinet meeting chaired by Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister. During the meeting, Jaishankar and his team succeeded in convincing Modi that India should avoid supporting anti-Taliban groups and instead gradually adopt engagement with the Taliban.

Thawing Of Ties

Following this decision, Indian diplomats met with Taliban representatives in Doha, Qatar. Later, in February 2022, India dispatched a technical team to Kabul to reopen its embassy. However, the level of ties began to improve significantly in 2023 after J.P. Singh, the head of Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan (PIA) division, visited Kabul. Singh became the first high-ranking Indian diplomat to visit Kabul after the Taliban’s return to power, marking a major step toward establishing closer engagement.

Subsequently, India handed control of the Afghanistan embassy and the consulates in Hyderabad and Mumbai to individuals close to the Taliban administration in Kabul as a confidence-building measure. The intensifying conflict between the Taliban and Pakistan further encouraged India to strengthen diplomatic engagement with the Taliban and reopen its embassy by sending a chargé d’affaires to Kabul.

This development was unprecedented, as few had expected that Pakistan-Taliban ties would deteriorate to the point where the Taliban would move toward establishing close relations with India.

The low-key re-opening of the embassy marked the beginning of direct engagement with the Taliban. Since then, India has adopted a “wait and watch” policy. This policy focused on observing developments inside Afghanistan and closely monitoring the future trajectory of Taliban-Pakistan relations. Analysts in India believed that the ties between the Taliban and Pakistan would eventually deteriorate over issues such as the Durand Line and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). This belief grew among Indian policymakers as they observed the rise in TTP activities in Pakistan’s erstwhile FATA region after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.

Signal To Pakistan

Unlike Indian policymakers, many in Pakistan believed that the Taliban’s return would help establish stability in the country’s northwest region. In contrast to these expectations, the Taliban’s return has not brought stability to that region. Pakistan has repeatedly asked the Taliban authorities to curb TTP activities in Afghanistan and hand over TTP leaders to the Pakistani government, demands that the Taliban consistently reject. As a result, this issue has become a major source of conflict between the Taliban and Pakistan.

The dispute has not remained rhetorical; it has resulted in multiple border clashes and even a Pakistani airstrike in Khost and Paktika provinces in which Pakistan claimed it was targeting TTP hideouts. The intensification of this conflict motivated India to invite Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban’s foreign minister, to strengthen bilateral engagement. In fact, amid the Taliban-Pakistan confrontation, India began to proverbially fish in troubled waters. By inviting Muttaqi, India sought to showcase its diplomatic success. Conversely, unlike in the 1990s, the Taliban also aimed to demonstrate that they had succeeded in diversifying their diplomatic relations with various countries, including India, and that they were no longer acting under Islamabad’s dictates.

The signal sent to Pakistan by Muttaqi’s visit to New Delhi was extremely significant. In the midst of his visit, border clashes between the Taliban and Pakistan intensified. The confrontation did not remain limited to the border; for the first time, Pakistani aircraft targeted Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. Later, Pakistan claimed that the Pakistan Air Force had struck a hideout of the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA) leadership in the Taimani area of Kabul. JuA is an offshoot of the TTP that broke away from the main group in 2014 under the leadership of Omar Khalid Khorasani, following an internal power struggle between Khorasani and the then-TTP chief Maulana Fazlullah. Although both groups reconciled and merged again in 2020, recent reports indicate a significant rift between JuA and the TTP leadership. Experts suggest that JuA may soon begin operating independently once again. This split is believed to stem from internal power struggles and disagreements over negotiations with the Pakistani government.

Strategic Loss For Pakistan

In consequence, India’s return to Afghanistan represents a major strategic loss for Pakistan. Pakistan invested heavily in the Taliban for nearly three decades with the expectation of keeping India out of Afghanistan permanently. However, with India’s renewed presence in Afghanistan, these investments have been rendered ineffective, leaving Pakistan without a coherent policy toward the Taliban. Today, Pakistan is in its weakest position vis-à-vis Afghanistan in the last forty years.

Historically, Pakistan took advantage of favorable geopolitical environments. During the Cold War, with support from Western countries - particularly the United States - Pakistan succeeded in overthrowing the pro-Soviet regime in Afghanistan and later obstructed the consolidation of the Mujahideen government after the Soviet withdrawal. More recently, through regional alignments with Russia, Iran, and China, Pakistan supported the Taliban insurgency and helped topple the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

In contrast to those periods, today the global and regional environment has changed dramatically. The United States is no longer interested in Afghanistan, and regional powers such as China, Russia, and Iran prefer to maintain the status quo. As a result, neither the international community nor regional states show sympathy for Pakistan in its clashes with the Taliban. Moreover, many regional countries lack trust in Pakistan due to its long-standing use of militant groups as instruments of strategic policy.

Therefore, today Pakistan is paying the price for its strategic miscalculations over Afghanistan. Pakistan neither has the capability to overthrow the Taliban, nor the influence to prevent them from establishing close ties with New Delhi. Consequently, as Taliban-Pakistan relations continue to deteriorate, the relationship between India and the Taliban is likely to strengthen. In this scenario, India will be the biggest beneficiary of the conflict.

However, the strengthening of Taliban-India ties runs counter to Pakistan’s interests. The more border clashes intensify between the Taliban and Pakistan, the more secure the Kashmir region and the Line of Control (LoC) become for India. Under such conditions, Pakistan will remain preoccupied with its northwestern border, giving India a unique opportunity to consolidate its control over Kashmir and potentially weaken, drive out, or eliminate Kashmiri militant groups operating in India-controlled Kashmir.

Kabul Must Not Take Sides

To achieve these objectives, India may offer various incentives to the Taliban administration-such as initiating economic projects, expanding the air corridor to reduce dependence on land routes, issuing medical visas for Afghanistan citizens seeking treatment, accepting a Taliban ambassador in New Delhi, and possibly even recognizing the Taliban regime. Such recognition would be the greatest diplomatic reward for the Taliban. Many observers believe that India is willing to take these steps to deepen its ties with the Taliban and isolate Islamabad.

However, this competition for influence in Afghanistan risks heightening strategic rivalry between India and Pakistan. This is not a positive development for Afghanistan. Such a rivalry could once again turn Afghanistan into a battleground between the two nuclear-armed neighbors, similar to the proxy conflicts of the 1990s, conflicts that inflicted tremendous suffering on Afghanistan civilians.

Therefore, the wisest policy for Afghanistan is to distance itself from the India–Pakistan rivalry and maintain a balanced approach toward both countries. Allowing Afghanistan to become a theatre for their geopolitical competition would lead to renewed proxy war, further bloodshed, and the victimization of Afghanistan citizens. Afghanistan must avoid taking sides in disputes such as Kashmir; its people should not once again pay the price of geopolitical contestation between India and Pakistan.

(The author is an Afghan Ph.D. Scholar from the Department of Defence and Strategic Studies, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India. Views expressed are personal. She can be contacted at zahidaria12@gmail.com )