Tensions between India and Pakistan likely to escalate due to Taliban takeover

Officials in India, backing the US-backed government in Kabul, have warned in recent days that the Taliban’s withdrawal could turn the country into a terrorist haven again. The Taliban have said they will no longer allow Afghanistan to be used against other countries, but Indian officials remain skeptical.

“It’s the same Taliban that was there 20 years ago,” India’s Chief of Defense Staff Bipin Rawat told a meeting on the US-India partnership last week.

Indian officials are particularly concerned about security in the disputed region of Jammu and Kashmir, where the heavily militarized Line of Control has separated India and Pakistan since partition in 1947. India does not share a border with Afghanistan, but has long been a target of Islamist terrorist groups. India’s control of a part of Muslim-majority Kashmir.

“Taliban victory will encourage radical ideologies and groups with similar orientation in the region and around the world. It will also encourage Pakistan to continue using terror as part of its state policy,” said Amar Sinha, a former Indian diplomat who served as an ambassador to Afghanistan between 2013 and 2016.

India and the US have accused Pakistan of supporting the Taliban and providing them safe havens on their part of the border, which Islamabad denies.

Pakistan says it supports the involvement of the Taliban in the political process, as it is the only way to bring about peace. Recently Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan further said, with the takeover of the Taliban, the Afghans “thrown the shackles of slavery”.

India and Pakistan have long accused each other of supporting terror groups. India has pointed to groups such as Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba being responsible for the attacks on Kashmir, while Pakistan has alleged that India supports Baloch separatists and violent jihadists.

“Pakistan has repeatedly presented irrefutable evidence of India’s active planning, abetting, aiding, abetting, financing and carrying out terrorist activities in Pakistan,” Islamabad’s foreign ministry said in August.

Pakistan has alleged that India had a hand in recent attacks against Chinese interests in Pakistan, including a bombing that killed nine Chinese nationals in July. New Delhi denies the allegations

In the 1990s, India and Pakistan fought a proxy war in Afghanistan. Allies such as India and Russia supported what was known as the Northern Alliance of warlords of ethnic minorities. Pakistan supported the country’s largest ethnic group, the jihadist groups of Pashtuns, who also live on the Pakistani side of the border, eventually settling on the Taliban.

Once the Taliban captured most of Afghanistan in 1996, several Pakistani jihadist groups targeting India ran training camps there—until a US-led invasion in 2001 toppled the Taliban. With the US leaving, India fears that Afghanistan will again become a haven for the groups it targets.

Deepender Singh Hooda, a former lieutenant general in the Indian Army, said the biggest concern for India would be the spread of militancy in Afghanistan due to the enthusiasm among various terrorist groups that had forced the US withdrawal.

“This may encourage groups like Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba, who will use this statement to recruit more youth into their ranks,” he said.

India blames the two groups, largely based in Pakistan, for carrying out several attacks on its soil. Lashkar-e-Taiba is believed to be behind the 2008 Mumbai attacks in which more than 160 people, including six Americans, were killed. The group denies carrying out the attack. Some of its operatives are facing trial in Pakistan for their alleged involvement.

Jaish-e-Mohammed, which has been designated a terrorist organization by the US and the United Nations, was founded by Pakistan-based Muslim cleric Masood Azhar. Azhar was freed in 1999 in exchange for passengers on an Indian Airlines plane that had been hijacked and taken to Afghanistan during the Taliban’s rule. The group’s primary objective is to merge the part of Kashmir controlled by India with Pakistan.

Pakistan maintains that the turmoil on the Indian side of Kashmir is primarily an indigenous insurgency against human rights abuses committed by Indian troops there. In 2019, New Delhi stripped the region’s political autonomy and detained several local politicians. Human rights groups have criticized India for suppressing political freedom in Kashmir.

The Indian government maintains that the removal of Kashmir’s autonomous status was intended to integrate it with the rest of the country and stimulate economic development there, and criticism over the suppression of political freedoms ignores security threats.

According to officials on both sides, the two countries have held secret peace talks over the years, but relations remain strained.

Violence in the Kashmir region is likely to escalate into a wider conflict. In 2019, India sent warplanes to Pakistan for the first time as rivals raged after the killing of 40 Indian paramilitary police officers by a Kashmiri terrorist in 1971. In a video released after the attack, the attacker claimed to be a Jaish-e-Mohammed member and was attacked by the Indian Air Force in what Indian officials said was the group’s training camp.

On Tuesday, New Delhi said the Indian ambassador to Qatar met Sher Mohammad Abbas Stankzai, the head of the Taliban’s political office in Doha. India’s Ministry of External Affairs said the discussions focused on the safety, security and return of Indian nationals stranded in Afghanistan. India also raised concerns about the use of Afghan soil for terrorist activities and the Taliban representative assured the ambassador that this would not happen.

“If India is to keep its neighborhood peaceful, it will have to find ways and means to work with all stakeholders, including the Taliban,” said Arvind Kumar, a professor at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.