India Must Keep Pakistan Embroiled in Afghanistan by Exploiting Pashtun Identity and Durand Line: Indian National Security Expert

Sat Jan 25 2025
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Key points

  • Tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan are high owing to recent border conflict
  • Every Afghan government has had some differences with Pakistan
  • Kabul provides a safe haven to TTP leaders against Pakistan’s interests
  • Pakistan’s former ambassador asks for finding natural positive leverages in Afghan-Pakistan relations

ISLAMABAD: Bhashyam Kasturi, a former director, National Security Council Secretariat, New Delhi, argues that “India must leverage its historical and contemporary connections with Afghanistan to keep Islamabad embroiled in the west.”

He also added, “This will entail a two-fold strategy of covertly playing up the Pashtun ethnic angle in Pakistan and overtly encouraging further discord over the Durand Line,” according to India’s World.

“Tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan are running high currently, after Afghan Taliban forces hit locations within Pakistan in December 2024,” Kasturi wrote.

“The discord is not new as every Afghan government has, to varying degrees, had disagreements with Islamabad,” Kasturi added.

Border tensions

He wrote, “The surprising thing is that the Afghan Taliban, too, has turned on its neighbour Pakistan by way of asserting its sovereignty. The situation is unlikely to resolve itself any time soon; border tensions and Kabul’s support for the Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) will remain contentious issues over the medium term.”

Pakistan is targeting the TTP in Afghanistan because Kabul is giving it shelter and support.

“After all, Islamabad itself is unwilling to negotiate with the TTP. For India, Pakistan’s focus on its western border is useful as it diverts Islamabad’s political and military machine from a single-minded India fixation,” he wrote.

India’s intensions

Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri and Afghanistan’s Interim Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi met with each other which became a concerning development for Pakistan, signaling India’s intentions to use the opportunity offered by Pakistan and Afghanistan’s recent differences.

“The recent meeting … is a notable development in view of the future implications for the regional scene. In my view, Pakistan should not be swayed by Afghanistan-India contacts as this is the sovereign right of [both] countries to have the relations of their choice,” Mansoor Ahmad Khan, Pakistan’s former ambassador to Afghanistan, told Pakistani media.

“For Pakistan, it is important to work out its relations with Afghanistan based on the natural positive leverages the two neighbours and their peoples have with each other,” he said.

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