In a previous column, I argued that Afghanistan’s use as an Indian ploy against Pakistan makes little sense. The country depends heavily on Pakistan for trade and transit, being landlocked and deeply tied to the Pashtun belt across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. I also noted that closer India–Afghanistan relations would open channels for Israeli and American influence through India, unsettling Iran and China, both immediate neighbours of Afghanistan.
There is no denying the friction between Pakistan and Afghanistan over the 2,500-kilometre border, over the four million Afghan refugees in Pakistan, and over Islamabad’s role as a US frontline ally during both the Soviet and American invasions. Yet these irritants do not amount to fundamental enmity. The Taliban government may be tempted by Indian investment, but this argument weakens in light of Beijing’s increasing economic footprint in Afghanistan.
Since the Taliban takeover, China has signed new agreements worth about US $2 billion, focused on mining, energy, and infrastructure. The best known is the Amu Darya oil extraction project, valued at US $540 million over three years, though only a fraction has been invested so far. Afghan officials also announced US$6.5 billion in new mining deals with Chinese firms in 2023, but most remain at the memorandum stage. Trade between China and Afghanistan hovers around US $1 billion annually, limited by security concerns, banking isolation, and the Taliban’s lack of international recognition. Still, China’s steady engagement reflects a strategic intent to integrate Afghanistan into the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and secure its western periphery against instability.
India, by contrast, may offer some financial resources but also carries the baggage of alignment with the United States. This raises an essential question: why would the Taliban challenge or jeopardise Chinese interests?
The answer may lie in a revived American strategy. Donald Trump, ever theatrical, recently declared his intent to “take back” the Bagram airbase situated only a few hundred kilometres from China’s sensitive nuclear facilities, warning Kabul that “bad things will happen” if it resists. To draw Afghanistan closer to India, however, an illusion must be cultivated: that India stands in quiet defiance of American influence, while Pakistan remains aligned with Washington and that, through such alignment, Pakistan might help the Americans in regaining Bagram.
The new Great Game may not be about capturing Afghanistan but about who gets trapped in it
To understand the backdrop, we must revisit May 2025, when President Trump mediated a ceasefire between India and Pakistan. Prime Minister Modi, intent on projecting strategic autonomy, denied any foreign involvement. Yet Trump quickly undercut him. He invited Pakistani leaders to the White House and created an impression of renewed warmth between the two sides. On several occasions, Trump publicly reminded the world of Pakistan’s downing of six or seven Indian jets in the air battles of 6–7 May – apparently embarrassing Modi.
This episode, coupled with Washington’s imposition of 25 percent tariffs on Indian goods and additional penalties for India’s purchase of Russian oil, fuelled speculation that the US–India strategic partnership was faltering. Analysts suggested that Washington had lost faith in New Delhi’s capacity to contain China through the Indo-Pacific strategy.
Circumstances prove it was a calculated feint.
Modi’s subsequent outreach to Beijing, widely interpreted as independent diplomacy, may actually have served Washington’s purpose. By encouraging India to appear conciliatory toward China, the US could lull Beijing into a false sense of security, while simultaneously reassuring Pakistan that its ties with China were not being challenged. India’s Godi media played its part alongside Modi’s covert strategy in line with the Americans by lashing out at Trump all this while, creating an impression of deepening rifts.
In the same period, Riyadh signed a strategic defence pact with Islamabad, “an attack on one shall be considered an attack on both.” Such an agreement, announced in the backdrop of India’s negotiations for a US$100 billion investment deal with Saudi Arabia, while Pahalgam happened in April, could hardly have occurred without American approval.
While attention in South Asia turned eastward after May, the real theatre of manoeuvre was shifting west toward Afghanistan.
When Pakistan retaliated against TTP sanctuaries across the Afghan border on 9 October 2025, Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi happened to be on an official visit to India — raising the obvious question: who lifted his travel ban? Notably, he also paid a visit to the Darul Uloom Deoband seminary, where he was received with notable enthusiasm. The symbolism was anything but accidental.
Almost a decade earlier, India’s National Security Adviser had publicly discussed the possibility of engaging the Taliban through the Deobandi network. In 2024, the Observer Research Foundation of India published a paper titled “Deoband and the Taliban: Faith, Diplomacy, and India’s Theological Opportunity.” It proposed that India could leverage its own Deobandi institutions to build diplomatic and ideological channels with the Taliban.
This shows that the India–Taliban rapprochement was not spontaneous but long in planning — and likely supported, or at least encouraged, by Washington and Riyadh. When the Saudis appear in any regional equation, an American blueprint becomes increasingly visible.
Seen in this light, the Indo-Pacific strategy may have been a diversion. The real containment of China, or at least its testing ground, now lies in Afghanistan. The logic is familiar. In 1979, after the Herat uprising killed hundreds of Soviet advisers, US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski persuaded President Carter to authorise covert aid to Afghan rebels, declaring, “We can give the USSR its own Vietnam.”
The same geopolitical field now reopens this time not for the Soviets, but for the Chinese. Beijing’s ambitious Belt and Road corridors, particularly CPEC, cut through regions where any sustained instability in Afghanistan could have ripple effects.
The American withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 may, in retrospect, appear less as a retreat and more as a strategic reset, leaving an ungoverned space to draw in Beijing’s interest and investment. The Indo-US strategy of containment has ostensibly moved from the sea to the mountains – Bagram is an obvious trap.
For Pakistan, the implications are twofold. On the one hand, instability in Afghanistan threatens its security and economic future. On the other hand, the temptation to view every Afghan provocation as betrayal risks deepening public resentment.
Islamabad’s real challenge is to resist the lure of reactionary politics and manage the Afghan narrative with composure. The guns will cool down one day, but the heat of rhetoric, once unleashed, will linger for a long time ahead.
The new Great Game may not be about capturing Afghanistan but about who gets trapped in it.