Afghanistan has been at the heart of India-Pakistan relations for over 40 years. Indeed, the Pakistani notion of “strategic depth” crystall...
Afghanistan has been at the heart of India-Pakistan relations for over 40 years. Indeed, the Pakistani notion of “strategic depth” crystallised in the 1980s: Islamabad, and Rawalpindi where military headquarters are located, were gaining a foothold in Afghanistan in order to carry more weight against India – even if only geographically.
This is partly why the Pakistani Army – along with the United States – supported the Mujahideen in defeating the Soviets in the late 1980s and subsequently helped bring the Taliban to power in the mid-1990s.
Geopolitical competition
For the Pakistanis, Taliban leader Mullah Omar’s troops provided another advantage: although they were Pashtuns, they supported an Islamist identity curbing Pashtun nationalism that Islamabad feared since the creation of Pakistan in 1947.
Since the 1920s, Pashtun nationalists had refused to identify with the Pakistani national project, having either pledged allegiance to Mahatma Gandhi’s Congress or because they considered Afghanistan their motherland. Kabul, until the 1980s, had cultivated the idea that the Pashtuns of Pakistan were destined to join Afghanistan, as well as an intense partnership with New Delhi. The Taliban’s first victory had thus ended Pakistan’s fear of one day witnessing the creation of a unified Pashtunistan, and alleviated the chokehold of the Indo-Afghani friendship.
For India, on...
