Pakistan has accused Afghanistan’s Taliban of serving as a “proxy” for India, amid escalating hostilities between Islamabad and Kabul.
Simply hours after Pakistan bombed areas in Kabul early on Friday, Pakistan’s Minister of Defence Khawaja Asif wrote on X that after NATO forces withdrew from Afghanistan in July 2021, “it was anticipated that peace would prevail in Afghanistan and that the Taliban would deal with the pursuits of the Afghan folks and regional stability”.
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“Nevertheless, the Taliban turned Afghanistan right into a colony of India,” he wrote and accused the Taliban of “exporting terrorism”.
“Pakistan made each effort, each immediately and thru pleasant nations, to maintain the state of affairs steady. It carried out intensive diplomacy. Nevertheless, the Taliban turned a proxy of India,” he alleged as he declared an “open battle” with Afghanistan.
This isn’t the primary time that Asif has introduced India into tensions with Afghanistan.
Final October, he alleged: “India desires to interact in a low-intensity battle with Pakistan. To attain this, they’re utilizing Kabul.”
To this point, Asif has introduced no proof to again his claims and the Taliban has rejected accusations that it’s being influenced by India.
However India has condemned the Pakistani army’s latest actions in Afghanistan, including to Islamabad’s rising discernment that its nuclear rival and the Taliban are edging nearer.
Earlier this week, after the Pakistani army carried out air raids inside Afghanistan on Sunday, India’s Ministry of Exterior Affairs stated in a press release that New Delhi “strongly condemns Pakistan’s airstrikes on Afghan territory which have resulted in civilian casualties, together with ladies and youngsters, through the holy month of Ramadan”.
After Friday morning’s flare-up between Pakistan and Afghanistan, India’s international ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal once more stated New Delhi “strongly” condemned Pakistan’s air strikes and likewise famous that they passed off on a Friday through the holy month of Ramadan.
“It’s one other try by Pakistan to externalise its inside failures,” Jaiswal stated in a press release on X.
Has India’s affect in Afghanistan grown beneath the Taliban and what’s India’s endgame with Afghanistan?
Right here’s what we all know:
How have relations between India and the Taliban advanced?
When the Taliban first rose to energy in Afghanistan in 1996, India adopted a hostile coverage in direction of the group and didn’t recognise its assumption of energy. India additionally shunned all diplomatic relations with the Taliban.
On the time, New Delhi considered the Taliban as a proxy for Pakistan’s intelligence companies. Pakistan, along with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, had been the one three nations to have additionally recognised the Taliban administration at that time.
Then, in 2001, India supported the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, which toppled the Taliban administration. India then reopened its embassy in Kabul and embraced the brand new authorities led by Hamid Karzai. The Taliban, in response, attacked Indian embassies and consulates in Afghanistan. In 2008, at the very least 58 folks had been killed when the Taliban bombed India’s embassy in Kabul.
In 2021, after the Taliban returned to energy, India closed its embassy in Afghanistan as soon as once more and likewise didn’t formally recognise the Taliban as the federal government of the nation.
However a yr later, as relations between Pakistan and the Taliban deteriorated over armed teams which Pakistan accuses Afghanistan of harbouring, India started partaking with the Taliban.
In 2022, India despatched a workforce of “technical consultants” to run its mission in Kabul and formally reopened its embassy within the Afghan capital final October. New Delhi additionally allowed the Taliban to function Afghanistan consulates within the Indian cities of Mumbai and Hyderabad.
Over the previous two years, officers from New Delhi and Afghanistan have additionally held conferences overseas, in Kabul and in New Delhi.
In January final yr, the Taliban administration’s International Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi met India’s International Secretary Vikram Misri in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates.
Then, in October 2025, he visited New Delhi and met Indian international minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.
After this assembly, Muttaqi informed journalists that Kabul “has at all times sought good relations with India” and, in a joint assertion, Afghanistan and India pledged to have “shut communication and proceed common engagement”.
Apart from beefing up diplomatic ties, India has additionally provided humanitarian assist to Afghanistan beneath the Taliban’s rule.
After a magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck northern Afghanistan in November final yr, India shipped meals, drugs and vaccines, and Jaishankar was additionally among the many first international ministers to name Muttaqi and supply his assist. Since final December, India has additionally permitted and applied a number of healthcare infrastructure tasks in Afghanistan, in keeping with a December 2025 report by the nation’s press data bureau.
Praveen Donthi, senior analyst on the Worldwide Disaster Group, informed Al Jazeera that the prices of avoiding engagement with the Taliban previously have compelled the Indian authorities to undertake strategic pragmatism in direction of the Afghan management this time.
“New Delhi doesn’t need to disregard this relationship on ideological grounds or create strategic area for India’s predominant strategic rivals, Pakistan and China, in its neighbourhood,” he stated.
Raghav Sharma, professor and director on the Centre for Afghanistan Research on the OP Jindal International College in India, added that the present engagement additionally stems from New Delhi’s pragmatic realisation that the Taliban is now in cost in Afghanistan and that there isn’t any significant opposition.
“States interact to be able to shield and additional their pursuits. Whereas there may be little by the use of ideological convergence, there are areas of strategic convergence, which is what has pushed India to interact with the Taliban, a few of their unpalatable insurance policies however,” he stated.
Is that this a brand new stance in direction of Afghanistan?
No. India’s rising affect and engagement with Afghanistan started properly earlier than the Taliban returned to energy in August 2021.
Between December 2001 and September 2014, through the US presence in Afghanistan, New Delhi was a powerful supporter of the Karzai authorities, after which of his successor, Ashraf Ghani’s authorities, which was in energy from September 2014 till August 2021, when the US withdrew from the nation.
In October 2011, beneath Karzai, India and Afghanistan renewed ties by signing an settlement to type a strategic partnership. New Delhi additionally pledged to assist Afghanistan within the face of international troops within the nation as part of this settlement.
Below each Karzai and his successor, Ghani, India invested greater than $3bn in humanitarian help and reconstruction work in Afghanistan. This included reconstruction tasks like faculties and hospitals, and likewise a brand new Nationwide Meeting constructing in Kabul, which was inaugurated in December 2015 when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Afghanistan for the primary time.
India’s Border Street Organisation (BRO) additionally assisted Afghanistan within the improvement of infrastructure tasks just like the 218km Zaranj-Delaram freeway in 2009 beneath Karzai’s authorities.
Below Ghani, New Delhi undertook constructing the Salma Dam undertaking to assist with irrigating Afghanistan. In June 2016, when Modi visited Afghanistan as soon as once more, he inaugurated this $290m dam undertaking. In Could 2016, Iran, India and Afghanistan additionally signed a trilateral commerce and transit settlement on the Chabahar port.
Throughout this era – 2001-2021 – Pakistan’s unease with New Delhi and Kabul’s new partnership grew.
In October 2011, after signing a strategic settlement with India, Karzai had assured Islamabad that whereas “India is a good pal, Pakistan is a twin brother”.
However Karzai was crucial of Pakistan’s assist for the Taliban. In his final speech as president of Afghanistan in Kabul in September 2014, he acknowledged that he believed many of the Taliban management lived in Pakistan.
In a 2011 report by a Washington, DC-based assume tank, the Heart for Strategic and Worldwide Research, Amer Latif, former director for South Asian affairs within the US Office of the Undersecretary of Protection for Coverage, famous that Karzai was strolling a “high-quality line between criticising Pakistan’s actions whereas additionally referring to Pakistan as Afghanistan’s ‘twin brother’.”
“It’s on this context that Karzai seems to be seeking to solidify long-term partnerships with nations that can help his stabilisation efforts,” he stated, referring to Karzai’s go to to India and his efforts to enhance relations with the subcontinent.
When Ghani rose to energy in September 2014, he tried to reset ties with Pakistan and likewise visited the nation in November that yr. However his efforts didn’t end in improved ties resulting from border disputes with Pakistan persevering with till his administration was overthrown by the Taliban in August 2021.
So why has India maintained ties with Afghanistan beneath the Taliban?
Initially, when the Taliban returned to energy in 2021 following the withdrawal of the US, political analysts largely anticipated Pakistan to prepared the ground in recognising the Taliban administration because the official authorities of Afghanistan, bettering bilateral relations which had turned icy beneath Karzai and Ghani.
However relations turned hostile, with Pakistan repeatedly accusing the Taliban of permitting anti-Pakistan armed teams just like the Pakistan Taliban (TTP) to function from Afghan soil. The Taliban denies this.
Then, the deportation of tens of 1000’s of Afghan refugees by Pakistan in recent times additional strained ties between the 2 neighbours.
India has finally taken a practical method to the Taliban to be able to preserve the nice relations it constructed with Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021, and has considerably leveraged poor relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan to cement these.
“With Pakistan’s more and more strained relations with Afghanistan, the logic of ‘enemy’s enemy’ is performing as a glue between Kabul and New Delhi,” Worldwide Disaster Group’s Donthi stated.
He added that even though India’s Bharatiya Janata Get together (BJP)-led authorities opposes Islamist organisations, “the strategic necessity to counter Pakistan has led it to interact with the Taliban proactively”.
India and Pakistan are nuclear-armed rivals which engaged in a four-day battle in Could 2025 after armed rebels killed Indian vacationers in Pahalgam, a well-liked vacationer spot in Indian-administered Kashmir, final April. New Delhi accused Pakistan of supporting insurgent fighters, a cost Pakistan strongly denied.
For its half, Afghanistan took the chance to strongly condemn the Pahalgam assault and the Indian Ministry of Exterior Affairs expressed “deep appreciation” to the Taliban for its “sturdy condemnation of the terrorist assault in Pahalgam … in addition to for the honest condolences”.
India has additionally condemned Pakistani army motion in Afghanistan and has offered help to 1000’s of Afghan refugees displaced from Pakistan.
So what’s India’s endgame in Afghanistan?
Sharma, the OP Jindal International College professor, stated India desires to make sure that Pakistan and China, whose affect has grown in South Asia in recent times, “don’t have a free run”, as “there’s a divergence of curiosity on Afghanistan” with each Pakistan and its ally, China.
“There are safety pursuits New Delhi is eager to additional and shield for which engagement [with the Taliban] is the one choice,” he added.
Anil Trigunayat, a former Indian diplomat, famous that whereas Afghanistan and Pakistan relations have their very own dynamic, presently the Taliban management, even when not a monolith, refuses to play to the tunes of the Pakistan army and its intelligence company.
“Therefore they [Pakistan] accuse Indian complicity in Taliban actions in Pakistan,” he stated.
However the Taliban, he stated, “understands and appreciates India’s intent, insurance policies and [humanitarian] contributions”, making its leaders eager to proceed collaboration with New Delhi.