- This is the result of them reviving their Old Cold War-era strategic partnership
By Andrew Korybko
SAN FRANCISCO (CONVERSEER) – Indian External Affairs Minister Dr Subrahmanyam Jaishankar announced that his country will upgrade its technical mission in Afghanistan to a full-fledged embassy during the six-day visit of his Afghan counterpart Amir Khan Muttaqi. This came the day after Pakistan bombed several alleged “Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan” (TTP, a.k.a. “Pakistani Taliban”) targets in Afghanistan the night before. The TTP is a terrorist-designated group whose upsurge of attacks over the past three years is the fiercest in a decade.
Some were surprised by Muttaqi’s trip to Delhi and the formal resumption of bilateral ties since he represents a fundamentalist Islamist dictatorship that was once accused of having a hand in the Pakistani-backed Kashmiri insurgency while India is a secular state and the world’s largest democracy. Be that as it may, Muttaqi said that “we never made any statement against India. Rather, we always sought good relations with India” during the American occupation, thus suggesting mutual realpolitik motives.
That’s arguably the case and is due to Pakistan bringing the Taliban and India together as will now be explained. The Indo-Pak rivalry is well known and requires no elaboration whereas worsening Taliban-Pak ties are attributable to the dangerous security dilemma that emerged a year after the end of the US occupation. In brief, the Taliban fears US-Pak collusion against it after the post-modern coup against Imran Khan, while Pakistan fears the implications of the Taliban refusing to recognize the Durand Line.
Accordingly, India and Afghanistan’s territorial disputes with Pakistan played a major role in their Taliban 2.0-era rapprochement, which was sped up by Trump 2.0 demanding the return of US troops to Bagram Airbase (which could only occur with Pakistani facilitation) and his new pressure campaign against India. These processes occurred in parallel with the US-Pak rapprochement, which is rapidly reviving their Old Cold War-era strategic partnership that India (and Russia) blame for destabilizing the region back then.
Recent reports that Pakistan wants to give the US a port, which some think could lead to the return of US forces, coincide with Indian accusations that Pakistan backs terrorism in Kashmir and Taliban ones that it backs ISIS-K (which Russia has winked at) to worsen those two’s threat perceptions. Pakistan similarly accuses India of backing the “Balochistan Liberation Army” and the Taliban of backing the TTP, which are allied US-designated terrorist groups and could thus serve as the pretext for joint pressure against them.
On the topic of pressure, China might soon feel some more of its military dimension from the US due to the latest pro-American moves of its “iron brother” Pakistan. Trump explicitly wants to return US troops to Bagram Airbase in order to threaten nearby Chinese nuclear sites and this could only occur with Pakistani facilitation. The possible return of US forces to Pakistan could also achieve this goal. Trump’s newly announced 100% tariffs on China right as US-Pak ties enter a renaissance further raise suspicions.
While China will likely never dump Pakistan since it invested billions into its economy through BRI’s flagship China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and sells more arms to Pakistan than to anyone else, the US might soon demand that Pakistan distance itself from China. If Pakistan complies as expected, then China and India might coordinate support for Afghanistan as one manifestation of their nascent rapprochement to balance the revived US-Pak regional duopoly, thus reshaping regional geopolitics.
