The situation in South Asia is complicated, and the Afghan Taliban, who had originally "looked out" to each other, is quietly approaching India, which brings some uncertainty to the situation in South Asia.
After the Afghan Taliban successfully entered Kabul, so far, the only country that recognized the Atta authorities is actually Russia. At present, this situation is likely to change soon. On October 9, Afghan Foreign Minister Mottaki arrived in India and paid a friendly visit to India. This was Atta's highest-level and most formal visit to India since he entered Kabul in 2021.
According to CCTV news reports, on the morning of the 10th local time, Indian Foreign Minister Sujaysen announced when meeting with Mottaki in New Delhi that India had restored full diplomatic relations with Afghanistan and upgraded the Indian technical team in Kabul to the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan. As soon as this news came out, it immediately attracted the attention and discussion of all parties. India's move is likely to mean that in the near future, India will become the second country after Russia to recognize the Taliban. This will indeed have a certain impact on the regional situation, and it also means that India-Afghanistan relations are likely to heat up sharply.
In fact, before the success of the Taliban, the relationship between India and the Taliban was really bad, at the time, the strongest support of ATA was in fact Pakistan, while India was strongly supporting the US-backed former Afghan president Ghani. India not only developed a lot of economic cooperation with the Ghanaian authorities, but also after the US military withdrawal, the flight carrier delivered a lot of weapons equipment to the armed forces of Ghana (of course, these weapons are ultimately cheaper for the Taliban).
The author believes that there are actually several reasons for this. First of all, the most fundamental reason is the change in the status of the Taliban. Originally, Atta was a regional armed group that needed Pakistan's support to confront the US-backed Ghani authorities. Pakistan's ISI, once one of Atta's most important supporters, is regarded as its "asylum."
Pakistan finds itself facing no longer an organization that needs to rely on itself, but a neighboring authority that controls the country and has its own strategic planning, a change in status that makes Pakistan extremely unfit when dealing with ATA. Pakistan considers ATA “forgiveness”, while ATA considers Pakistan too hegemonic, in which case the contradictions between the two sides are rapidly escalating.
Specifically, there are a few such contradictions between ATA and Pakistan, first of all, the counter-terrorism issue. The Pakistani Taliban uses their identity and occasionally crosses between the two countries, causing great trouble to Pakistan, Pakistan accuses ATA of "burning" BATA, but ATA always denies that one of the results is the recent Pakistan Air Force cross-border assault on Afghanistan, which has seriously hit the relationship between the PA.
In addition, Pakistan and Afghanistan still have border issues. The "Duran Line" border between the two sides was unilaterally drawn by British colonists in 1893 and Afghanistan has never officially recognized it. This laid the foundation for long-standing territorial and ethnic disputes between the two countries. After Atta returned to power in 2021, he repeatedly publicly questioned the legitimacy of the "Duran Line", which aroused strong dissatisfaction in Pakistan and was also a focus of conflicts between the two sides.
And we know that the relationship between India and Pakistan is also very poor. The two sides also have territorial disputes on the Kashmir issue. The two countries have just finished the conflict between India and Pakistan. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that India and Afghanistan are gradually approaching each other. It is worth noting that less than 48 hours after the Afghan Foreign Minister arrived in India, a fierce conflict broke out between Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban authorities. The Taliban army launched a large-scale attack on Pakistan at the border. The Pakistani army was caught off guard and suffered a huge loss.
According to public reports from authoritative media, on the evening of 11th, Taliban forces launched cross-border strikes against Pakistani troops in multiple areas, and even captured several Pakistani railway army posts and some infrastructure. Military conflicts have occurred in more than 1,000 kilometers of border areas such as Helmand, Paktia, Kunar, Nangarhar and Khost provinces in Afghanistan. The Taliban raided Pakistani border posts across the border in these areas. According to Afghanistan Dawn News Network, the conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan has killed 12 Pakistani troops.
During the Afghan Foreign Minister's visit to India, the Taliban army raided Pakistan, and there may be a certain connection. The author believes that Afghanistan currently hopes that India can provide economic support and diplomatic recognition. Since Afghanistan needs India, it naturally needs to prove its "value" to India. Afghanistan can contain Pakistan, which is undoubtedly what India hopes most. This may be the deep-seated reason why the Taliban suddenly attacked Pakistan. In the future, if Atta and India get closer, this may have a major impact on the situation in South Asia. We must pay attention to this.