Taliban-Pakistan strife gives India a foothold

THE Taliban have completed five years of their rule in Afghanistan. They re-established their Emirate on August 15, 2021, as the Afghan republic collapsed. President Ashraf Ghani fled the country. Other leaders, with the exception of former President Hamid Karzai and former Chief Executive Officer Abdullah Abdullah, also left Afghanistan. With the end of the republic’s political system, its armed forces disintegrated; its personnel went back to their villages.

Over the past five years, the Taliban regime under Haibatullah Akhundzada has cohered despite internal differences. It has reimposed the group’s basic ideological tenets, but not as rigorously as in the 1990s. Afghanistan’s economic situation continues to be dire, even though some foreign assistance and remittances have helped in preventing a meltdown. The Taliban have contained the activities of the Islamic State (Khorasan province). In recent months, though, there have been reports of some popular restlessness. There has also been some armed anti-Taliban activity in the Baghlan and Badakhshan provinces, but it is not of major proportions. All in all, the regime remains stable.

A remarkable development in the Taliban story over the past five years, if not since their emergence in 1994, is the breakdown in their relations with Pakistan. This has been best illustrated by Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, Director General (DG) of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Public Relations. Recently, he told the media that the Taliban were “massacring the Islamic faith”. He went on to ask if their conduct was Islamic.

Chaudhry pointed to their treatment of women as well as children and fatwas against other Muslims. He concluded by asking if the Taliban represented any version of Islam. He reminded the media corps that the Taliban’s ties with India were contrary to the Quran’s Surah Al Imran, Ayat 28. According to him, this Ayat instructed Muslims not to befriend kafirs. Most Muslim scholars disagree with this interpretation.

It is ironic that the Pakistani establishment responsible for nurturing the Taliban and ensuring that they defeated the US and demolished the Afghan republic should now be so vituperative against them. This is especially because the Taliban have not changed their interpretation of the Islamic faith. That had not deterred the now-disgraced and in-custody Lt Gen Faiz Hameed (retd) as DG, ISI, in August 2021 from exulting at the Taliban victory over the republic. His ear-to-ear grin at the Serena Hotel in Kabul was captured in an iconic photograph. What then has caused the relatively rapid meltdown between Pakistan and the Taliban?

Recently, a senior leader of the Afghan republic told me that a perceptive Pakistani official was worried during the 2021 Doha interaction between the republic and the Taliban about how Pakistan-Afghanistan relations would evolve if the Taliban came to power in Kabul. The official told the Afghan leader that Pakistan and the Taliban were heading for a “divorce”.

This Pakistani — a Pathan — was an outlier, for the prevailing opinion in Pakistan’s Punjabi-dominated military leadership was that it would reduce Afghanistan to almost the status of the country’s fifth province. However, the official, who had a clear understanding of the Taliban psyche, knew that they would eventually follow an independent course, including in their approach to India. This assessment was correct.

After an initial period when the Taliban could not openly go against Rawalpindi, they insisted on opening up to India and wanted to establish warm and cooperative ties with it. New Delhi took its time, but eventually it reciprocated. The India-Taliban relationship has been a major reason for Pakistan’s rupture with the regime.

More importantly, it was the Pakistani establishment’s complete misreading of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)’s solid ties with the Taliban that led Rawalpindi to expect that the Taliban would abandon the TTP. The TTP had sworn allegiance (bayat) to the Taliban emir. It had also developed the ability to influence intra-Taliban relations, which gave it a standing in Afghanistan.

Since 2021, Pakistan has tried everything — from persuasion to coercion, including sending back Afghan refugees at a time when the country found it difficult to absorb them, to open use of armed force — but the Taliban-TTP relationship has not eroded. There is little chance that it will do so in the foreseeable future.

Over and above these factors, there is the old and enduring prejudice of the Punjabi establishment towards Afghans, which got exacerbated when the Afghan State disintegrated and millions of poor Afghans came to Pakistan. This Punjabi prejudice is also reflected in its attitude towards its own Pathans, though many of them have been co-opted in the Punjabi-dominated state.

The bias exhibited by Punjabi biradaris towards the Pathans who have long settled in Punjab is less than that towards those who live across the Indus, but it is there nonetheless. Former PM Imran Khan is of Pathan origin; he captured the popular imagination in Punjab, but that began with his cricketing success. He languished in politics till the Army built him up, but the Punjabi generals brought him down when he grew too big for his boots.

There has been a long history of an inimical attitude among the people on both sides of the Indus, and in particular those who live across the Durand Line. Analysts do not generally appreciate how much of a role this plays in Afghanistan-Pakistan relations. Only those who have spent endless hours with the Afghans, drinking pot after pot of chai sabz (green) or chai siyah (black), sometimes late into the night, get an inkling of their attitude towards the Punjabis and the role they play in the affairs of the State even now.

To this has now been added the bitterness over the treatment meted out to the refugees by the Pakistani officialdom and even the public. And, finally, there is the Taliban feeling that Pakistan was playing both sides during the years it supported the group.

Afghanistan-Pakistan tensions are not going to end anytime soon; this will naturally give opportunities to other powers. These have to be utilised constructively and wisely.

Vivek Katju is former Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs