India funded a range of small-scale development projects in Afghanistan. These are in almost all provinces of Afghanistan; the projects are high-impact, low-cost, and concentrated in Pashtun border areas, of great concern to Pakistan, hence the accusation of Indian consulates being fronts for espionage. Pakistan has every reason to believe that these projects serve India’s strategic goals of developing a pro-Indian Kabul.
It is on record that spymaster Vikram Sood of RAW admitted a growing sense in India that stronger relations with Afghanistan’s Pashtun leaders were critical not just to increase India’s presence inside Afghanistan, but also with Baloch separatists. Karzai knew of, and did not obstruct, the presence of Baloch separatist leaders such as Brahamdagh Bugti on Afghan soil. Soon after 2002, India began developing its covert infrastructure to cultivate what Indian officials called their ‘Baloch’ and ‘Pashtun’ cards.
Afghanistan’s intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), then under Mohammad Arif Sarwari, who had an excellent rapport with India since the civil war years, was a strong ally. With Karzai’s permission, Arif began dispatching NDS officers for training to India, unlocking new and heightened levels of intelligence cooperation. Arif’s successor, Amrullah Saleh, also had a close relationship with India’s National Security Advisor M. K. Narayanan.
Since independence, India has been active in Afghanistan, and the intentions are not entirely noble, as corroborated by the detailed accounts in My Enemy's Enemy: India in Afghanistan from the Soviet Invasion to the US Withdrawal by Dr Avinash Paliwal.
Paliwal writes: “A serving member of the Indian parliament, Retired Colonel Bashir Hussain Zaidi, was dispatched to Afghanistan to meet Ghaffar Khan in late September and explore the possibility of reigniting the Pashtūnistān issue. The 85-year-old leader was ‘full of vigour and enthusiastic about waging his struggle for emancipation from Pakistan’s rule’.
Within India, the Pashtun Jirga-e-Hind, an outfit advocating for independent Pashtūnistān, also pressured the government to move beyond the war of words. In November 1965, addressing a fully packed Lok Sabha, EAM Swaran Singh invited Ghaffar Khan to resume his struggle for Pashtun independence from Indian soil and promised all support that he would require in that pursuit. Soon, All-India Radio (AIR) broadcast that Pashtun nationalists were setting up administrative centres in Pakistan’s tribal areas and NWFP, to advance the Pashtūnistān campaign.”
It is becoming evident that many within the Taliban shura who issue rigid decrees on women’s education and personal freedoms do not apply these restrictions to their own families
The Royals, with all their quirks and greed, were still better for Pakistan, as observed by Paliwal: “Zahir Shah was ambiguous about Indo-Pakistan relations and was not supportive of India in its conflicts with Pakistan in 1947–49, 1965, and 1971,” and “vacillated” on Kashmir. Though Zahir Shah did not support India over Pakistan directly, he did not oppose India either. Walking a tightrope in highly tense situations, Kabul saw it in its best interests to be, or be seen as being, neutral. India’s military assault on Lahore raised concerns in Kabul about a potential unravelling of Pakistan. In this context, as India’s advocacy on Pashtūnistān gained momentum, Kabul began downplaying the issue in bilateral exchanges with Pakistan.
According to Paliwal, in 1982, Fikryat Tabeev, the then Soviet ambassador to Afghanistan, told J. N. Dixit, India’s new ambassador to Kabul, to seriously consider a full-scale war against Pakistan to ‘take back’ the whole of Kashmir, as Rawalpindi focused on Afghanistan. Unaffected by Baloch and Pashtun requests for support to reignite insurgencies across Pakistan, Indira Gandhi put a firm veto on Tabeev’s ‘adventurous’ proposal, citing concerns of global condemnation and an undesirable Chinese military intervention in Kashmir.
She even refused to organise a meeting between Ghaffar Khan and Brezhnev to discuss Pashtūnistān, forcing Ghaffar Khan, in protest, to cancel his visit to Delhi for medical treatment in March 1982. Khan bitterly blamed Gandhi for betraying the Pashtuns, just as Nehru had done, and for having no raham (mercy, or in this context, sympathy) for the Pashtūnistān issue.
Later, Gandhi reversed this policy and wanted the RAW-KhAD-KGB relationship to deepen. In addition to clandestine visits by low-level separatists, prominent Pashtun leaders such as Wali Khan and Abdul Ghaffar Khan visited India openly. It was in this context of Gandhi’s ‘covert policy’ towards Afghanistan and Pakistan in the early 1980s that Abdul Ghaffar Khan was supposed to meet Gandhi in 1983 (following his visit to India for medical treatment), from which he eventually backed out.
It is heartening to note that our security establishment’s ill-conceived attempt to pardon and humanise the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has finally collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions. The true face of the TTP now stands exposed, and one hopes that this misguided exercise in appeasement has at last reached its logical end.
It was profoundly disconcerting to witness the establishment’s persistent engagement with known militants and extremists, even as it displayed unwarranted suspicion towards those seeking change through constitutional and peaceful means. Such misplaced priorities have long raised troubling questions about the wisdom—and moral compass—of those directing national policy.
Afghanistan, both under the Mujahideen and the Taliban in the past, made it very clear that it does not accept the Durand Line as the international boundary between the two countries. We must not forget that even under the Taliban, who at one point controlled all of Afghanistan except Panjshir and Badakhshan, Pakistan’s desire to turn Afghanistan into its strategic depth against India did not materialise. On the contrary, it was the Taliban who were using Pakistan as strategic depth as a matter of right, while we pretended to the world that they were under our control, an impression that did us no good.
Arwin Rahi’s assessment that “Taliban, unlike the well-educated and well-learned scholars of Islam at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, hold extremist and misogynistic views because they are a direct product of the semi-literate, rural Afghan society, which holds the same views,” is indeed a fact: the Afghan Taliban’s outlook on life is more influenced by their culture than by Islam.
It is becoming evident that many within the Taliban shura who issue rigid decrees on women’s education and personal freedoms do not apply these restrictions to their own families. Their daughters study comfortably in Qatar and other Muslim countries, while ordinary Afghans, especially the poor and rural, are kept illiterate, serving as hostages to the Taliban’s political ambitions.
Afghans need to wake up and get out of this delusional and hopelessly dangerous pursuit of expanding Afghanistan up to the shores of the Arabian Sea
This hypocrisy underscores that it is not religion but self-interest that drives the Taliban’s foreign and domestic policies. The rhetoric of Ummah and Islamic unity has long given way to cold realpolitik. Pakistan, after years of misplaced expectations, is finally beginning to see through this façade. It is not too late to overhaul our foreign and security policy—placing Pakistan first within a broader, globally informed strategic outlook.
A few words on Pakistan’s historical concerns vis-à-vis separatist elements receiving political and financial patronage from Afghanistan and India: these are not only real but validated by admissions from Afghan, Indian, and Soviet/Russian sources in declassified accounts.
According to The KGB in Afghanistan by Vasily Mitrokhin and The Cold War History Project, “Nur Muhammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin proposed to the Russian politicians that they could reach the Strait of Hormuz and the shores of the Indian Ocean. At the government level, Taraki raised the question with Brezhnev of Afghanistan extending to the sea and training the army to act in this region, particularly against Pakistan, with a radical solution to the Pushto and Baluchi problem to the advantage of Afghanistan. Pakistan was viewed as a foreign body in the region.”
It further elaborates that in August 1978, Hafizullah Amin was heatedly telling Ambassador Puzanov and Chief Soviet Military Adviser in Kabul, General Gorelov: “We are not parading the question of Pashtūnistān and Baluchistan in the press, although this question is still on the agenda. The territory of Afghanistan must reach to the shores of the Gulf of Oman and the Indian Ocean; we wish to see it with our own eyes.
Our task is to direct the officers, soldiers, and all the Afghan people to the Durand Line, which we do not recognise, and then to the valley of the Indus, which must be our border. If we do not fulfil this historic task, then one can say that we have been working in vain. We must have an outlet to the Indian Ocean!”
Babrak Karmal also cherished the idea of a greater Afghanistan. He did not recognise the Durand Line as final, but he did not raise the matter in public. Matrosov, the head of the KGB border troops, approved: “It is right not to raise the matter of the borders with neighbours now. There is a right time for everything.”
It is a fact that two-thirds of Pashtuns live in Pakistan, and the weight of the Pashtun cultural and economic identity is now based in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. Any alteration of the international border between Pakistan and Afghanistan would have disastrous consequences, giving rise to anarchy which would not remain confined but draw in regional players as well.
Afghanistan’s political elites, tribal networks, and militant factions have historically excelled at balancing and manipulating external powers to preserve autonomy and extract benefits, a practice often called “playing the great game in miniature.” Afghans have mastered the art of “Dependency-then-defiance,” and this pattern has been played out across different Afghan governments.
It is a recurring pattern in Afghan statecraft equally practised by Mujahideen, the first Taliban, Karzai, Ghani, and the Taliban again. Every external player, Britain, USSR, US, Pakistan, and now India, has at some point believed they could “manage” Afghanistan. Each has eventually learned that Afghanistan manages them instead. What looks like “betrayal” from the outside is, from Kabul’s perspective, continuity in statecraft: surviving by keeping foreigners off-balance.
All things considered, the Afghans have wasted much time, energy, and resources over the last 78 years in keeping the disastrous fire of the Durand Line alight to their total disadvantage. Pakistan, no doubt, has suffered, but nothing compared to the damages incurred by Afghanistan, which otherwise could have directed its resources to the betterment of its people.
Afghans need to wake up and get out of this delusional and hopelessly dangerous pursuit of expanding Afghanistan up to the shores of the Arabian Sea. Instead of wasting further precious time and resources on non-issues like the Durand Line, Afghans must struggle to stand on their own and achieve true political and economic independence for their suffering masses. It is time Afghanistan stopped fighting yesterday’s war and chose between nation-building and nostalgia.