Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif blamed a third country, India, on October 28 after talks between Pakistan and Afghanistan broke down to extend their fragile ceasefire following deadly border clashes.
In a television interview, Asif claimed that India had “penetrated” the Afghan Taliban leadership. He insisted that was the cause of Pakistan and Afghanistan’s growing tensions.
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He praised the Taliban’s leadership during the Istanbul talks. Asif claimed that Delhi is in charge of the puppet show’s staging and pulling. “India wants to engage in a low-intensity war with Pakistan. They are using Kabul to accomplish this.
The defense minister claimed that India was supporting the Taliban in a bid to defeat Pakistan without providing any proof. 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.
Asif claimed that the Taliban was “sitting in India’s lap” as Pakistani and Afghan troops began to clash along the border earlier in the month. Islamabad has claimed, once more, that India is behind the TTP, that it allows anti-Pakistani armed groups like the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and that it is also supporting the Taliban.
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’s repeated attacks on Pakistani soil.
The use of India as an alleged shadowy villain by Pakistani leaders like Asif as a “shadowy villain” by Asif, according to analysts, highlights Islamabad’s deep unease over ties between New Delhi and Kabul. New Delhi’s expanding presence in Kabul is a source of deep suspicion for Pakistan, which is wedged between Afghanistan and India.
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.
regional conflicts
One of the first nations to offer assistance on Monday when a magnitude 6. 3 earthquake struck northern Afghanistan was India.
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. He claimed that soon supplies would be delivered.
The Afghan Taliban leader’s first visit to India since the group seized power for a second time in Kabul in August 2021 was just a few days after Muttaqi completed his six-day visit.
The visit also underscored a wider re-engagement between India and the Taliban in recent years, capped by New Delhi’s decision last month to reopen its embassy in Kabul.
The Afghan Taliban’s reign of power four years ago has had a significant change in the regional landscape. India had stopped conducting its diplomatic relations in Afghanistan at the time, but Pakistan’s influence in Kabul was widely perceived as increasing.
For years, Pakistan had been the Taliban’s primary patron. The Taliban’s role as a proxy for Pakistan has long been revered by India. When the Taliban was in power and was opposing US forces and Afghan governments, the group and its allies accused them of repeatedly attacking Indian diplomatic posts in Kabul, Jalalabad, Herat, and Mazar-i-Sharif between 2001 and 2021.
Islamabad’s longstanding doctrine of “strategic depth” is rooted in the military’s desire to wield leverage in Afghanistan and blunt India’s influence in South Asia.
However, the Taliban have acted more amiably toward New Delhi since 2021.
Former member of India’s National Security Advisory Board C Raja Mohan recently stated in his column for Foreign Policy magazine that India has been “cautious, pragmatic, and deliberately quiet” since re-engagement with Kabul since 2021.
This shift, however, has unnerved Islamabad, especially as Pakistan now faces security threats on both its borders.
A flashpoint developed from the April Pahalgam attack, which claimed the lives of at least 26 people in Indian-administered Kashmir and gave rise to accusations of Pakistan-based organizations.
The nuclear-armed rivals’ tensions increased as a result of India’s retaliation two weeks later, which led to a four-day conflict in May.
Five days after a ceasefire, Jaishankar called Muttaqi to express his appreciation for Afghanistan’s condemnation of the Pahalgam attack and to reiterate support for Afghan development.
“Bottomized our long-standing friendship with the Afghan people and continued support for their development needs.” The Indian minister of foreign affairs wrote on his X account, “Discussed ways and means of moving cooperation forward.”
After clashing with India in May, Pakistan also engaged in a weeklong fight with Afghanistan that took place while Muttaqi was visiting India.
After two rounds of negotiations in Doha and Istanbul, Qatar and Turkiye managed to broker a ceasefire. However, at best the state of the peace is.
Deeper anxieties
However, some analysts contend that Pakistan’s worries stem from earlier strategic concerns rather than recent developments in Afghanistan.
Pakistan had anticipated the Taliban would not “create space or vacuum” for India, according to Amina Khan of the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad, a expectation that hasn’t been fulfilled.
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.
In press briefings last month, Randhir Jaiswal, a spokesperson for the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, claimed that Pakistan’s “old practice” was to blame its neighbors for its internal failings while India was closely monitoring the Pakistan-Afghanistan border tensions.
Pakistan is upset that Afghanistan’s territorial autonomy is being exercised. India remains fully committed to the sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of Afghanistan”, Jaiswal said on October 16.
Khan, however, argued that Pakistan should view its relationship with Afghanistan as separate from international ties.
She told Al Jazeera, “Pakistan and Afghanistan have a bilateral relationship, and that should be viewed in complete isolation.” “Similarly, despite the tensions and clashes, India-Pakistan ties should also be viewed independently without including the Afghan factor”.
competing narratives
Pakistan has long accused India of supporting unrest in its southwestern province of Balochistan, where separatist groups such as the Baloch Liberation Army and Baloch Liberation Front , have fought for secession.
Islamabad cited Kulbhushan Jadhav’s arrest in Balochistan in March 2016 as evidence of India’s meddling. The allegations were refuted and found to be unsupported in New Delhi.
But the Pakistani government has also linked a recent rise in violence across Pakistan – especially in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, both of which share the country’s 2, 600km-long (1, 615-mile-long) border with Afghanistan – to armed groups operating from Afghan territory.
Islamabad specifically accused the Taliban of providing the TTP, which is frequently referred to as the Pakistan Taliban, with safe havens on Afghan soil. In recent years, Pakistan has claimed a number of deadly attacks on Pakistani soil. Although the TTP and the Afghan Taliban are distinct ideologies, they both share some similarities.
This year, however, Pakistan’s official messaging has increasingly framed both Baloch separatists and the TTP as Indian-sponsored proxies, a rhetorical move intended to tie disparate threats to a single external adversary, analysts said.
Asif Durrani, a former Pakistani diplomat, claimed that Baloch groups’ leaders had “proudly acknowledged” Indian assistance and that New Delhi had allegedly supported the TTP through intermediaries between 2001 and 2021. Pakistan’s claims that India supports the TTP have no public support have been supported by any evidence.
Now with ties with the Afghan Taliban improving, Durrani said India would “be able to manoeuvre in Afghanistan”.
“I don’t believe they are necessarily dictating terms to the Afghan Taliban, but it’s likely to be a case of quid pro quo where Indians will aid them instead of the Taliban looking the other way,” he said.
Strategic reluctance
Ibraheem Bahiss, an analyst at the International Crisis Group, said Pakistan’s military establishment tends to view Afghanistan primarily through an Indian lens.
“Afghanistan itself is not perceived as an existential threat by the Pakistani security establishment.” However, the notion of a much bigger and potent threat posed by India only makes things worse. And in that context, Afghanistan does become a much bigger concern for policymakers in Islamabad”, he told Al Jazeera.
However, Bahiss added that it was difficult for Pakistan to support its claim that India was supporting separatists from all over the world, including the TTP and the Baloch.
The Baloch groups are on the opposite end of the spectrum because of their secular outlook, he said, despite the fact that TTP and the Afghan Taliban share ideological, social, and language affinities.
“When you claim that India and the Taliban, two entities with a bitter history, are coming together to support two entirely disparate groups, that is not a very believable, cohesive narrative”.
However, Islamabad views the two relationships, which are those between Kabul and New Delhi, as mutually beneficial threats.
Khan reacted to recent accusations by Kabul and New Delhi of supporting “terrorism” as evidence of an emerging, if tacit, convergence of interests, which she referred to as a “marriage of convenience.”
Risk of escalation
Relations between Pakistan and India have been tense despite the ceasefire’s effect in May.
Both sides have exchanged rhetoric and ramped up their rhetoric, including contradictory assertions about aircraft losses.
Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh warned in October that any aggression in the Sir Creek area would be met with a “resounding response that will change both history and geography”.
An almost 100-kilometer (62-mile-long) tidal estuary between Pakistan and India’s Rann of Kutch, which the two neighbors have long fought over.
In response to the May conflict’s lessons, Singh instructed soldiers to remain prepared for a “warlike” situation on October 27.
Pakistan’s army chief, General Asim Munir, issued a counterwarning at a passing-out parade at Pakistan’s premier military academy on October 18.
He said that India will bear the brunt of the consequences for the region and beyond for the ensuing escalations. Pakistan would act far beyond the expectations of the initiators if a new wave of hostilities were to be sparked.
Both countries have deployed forces in the Arabian Sea and are conducting major exercises.
Former Pakistani ambassador Seema Ilahi Baloch, who has had informal discussions with Afghanistan, said Pakistan’s unease is worsened by the timing of India’s re-engagement with Kabul.
Source: Aljazeera
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