Can India Leverage Pak-Afghan Clashes Without Offending Trump?

If Kabul is hostile to Pakistan, it isn't likely to provide it strategic depth in the event of a war with India.

According to the Uited Nations Assistance Mission (UNAMA), 17 Afghans were killed and 346 were injured in Spin Boldok in Kandahar.

(Photo: Kamran Akhter/The Quint)

The skirmish between neighbours Afghanistan and Pakistan last weekend has had a noticeable ripple effect in terms of regional geopolitics. On October 9 2025, two loud explosions were heard in Kabul at around 9 pm. Gun firing was also heard in parts of the city.

After the explosions, the Afghan government mobilised its Humvees that the US had left behind and attacked the Pakistani army at many points, including the strategically located Ghulam Khan area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on the Pak-Afghan border.

The intensity of the violence was fiercer than what was witnessed between India and Pakistan in May, 2025. According to the Uited Nations Assistance Mission (UNAMA), 17 Afghans were killed and 346 were injured in Spin Boldok in Kandahar. In other theatres, a similar number of deaths had taken place. On 15 October, a 48-hour ceasefire was announced after another round of reported fighting. Meanwhile, the Foreign Minister of Afghanistan, Amir Khan Muttaqi, appeared absorbed in his New Delhi sojourn.

The Afghan Pakistan Conflict

So why is India rolling out the red carpet treatment for the Taliban, which it does not yet officially acknowledge as the rulers of Afghanistan? Though Muttaqi's visit, which was mutually worked out by both the countries and cleared by the United Nations, coincided with Pakistan’s attack on Afghanistan, the conflict had, expectedly, been building for a while. India thinks that Kabul is now hostile towards Pakistan and would not provide it what it wants, ie, strategic depth in the event of a war with India.

Strategic depth is a military and diplomatic idea that means the geographical distance from the enemy, and in the event of a war, finding space to protect its assets, including political leadership to regroup and attack the enemy. That strategic depth as an idea is in tatters. Its game plan was to use Afghanistan for this purpose, but it has boomeranged.

Unlike the Islamic State (IS), the Taliban is a nationalistic organisation, with strong views on the Durand Line that separates the two countries, and Afghans see much of what Islamabad does as a means to deepen the misery of common Afghans.

After the Taliban captured Afghanistan on 15 August 2022, Pakistan announced that they would send 1.7 million undocumented Afghans back home. Afghans hate Pakistan, and the decision of Islamabad angered them more. Pakistan has made a lot of investment in Afghanistan for reasons of preserving its strategic depth, but the move caused greivous hurt.

Another reason for Pakistani interest in Afghanistan is that Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of supporting Pakistan’s internal Taliban in waging terror attacks against the government of Islamabad.

The big question is, why is India reaching out to Afghanistan by going to the extent of inviting its Foreign Minister of Taliban, even as the embassy of Afghanistan in India still flies the flag of the earlier Ashraf Ghani government?

Speaking to The Quint, an ex-Indian diplomat said upon requesting anonymity, “India’s concerns are very Pakistan-centric. If Kabul is upset with Islamabad then it is New Delhi’s friend". He further said that the Afghans have been missing their relationship with India and that the latter has seemingly decided to upgrade its ties with Kabul during Muttaqi's Delhi sojourn.

The Larger Game for India: Russia-US

Another question that has been lurking in foreign policy circles is, was the visit held at the behest of Russia, which has been pushing for India’s acceptance of the changed reality in Afghanistan? The Russians are surely determined to ensure that the Americans do not gain another toehold in this region.

Highly placed sources in the Russian government claim that the Afghan government is in touch with them, even while the Pakistan and Taliban army were fighting each other. Last week the Afghan ambassador to Beijing also met senior Chinese officials to allegedly elicit support against Pakistan.

India has its own views on Russian support for Kabul, guided as it is by history and geopolitics. The last time the US was hostile towards the Soviet Union-backed Afghan regime in the 1970s, it raised Pakistan to be a spearhead of Western interests.

India is ambivalent on this and would like to ride on US perception of the region. The belief is that the US did not leave the country when Taliban took over in 2022. Both countries are still bound together by the Doha Accord, assiduously put together by Zalmay Khalizaad, the US interlocutor for Afghanistan.

One of the clauses of the Doha accord is that there will be no presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan or the Soviet-built airport, Bagram, which now the US President, Donald Trump, wants for his country. According to intelligence reports, about 25,000 highly trained Afghan commandos that have been trained by the US are stationed there. These Afghan commandos and their families are in the US.

If Bagram comes back to the US, the Afghans will protect and manage the airport. And when they do, they will be fulfilling an important commitment made in the Doha accord—that no foreign troops will be based at Bagram.

During a recent meeting between the US Ambassador designate to India, Sergio Gor, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi with other officials, the issue of rare earth minerals had come up. Interestingly, the suggestion emanating from the US and its demand for gaining control over Bagram stems from the fact that the airport is being used to transport rare earth minerals to China, which is 30 minutes by flight.

The US wants that to be stopped as it wants them for its own semi-conductor industry. Here, there is a convergence of interest between India and US on this vital issue. Pakistan has been the conduit for sending these rare earth minerals to China.

Is Trump Looking for Rare Earth Minerals?

There is serious competition between India and Pakistan about gaining US support for its various causes. New Delhi is deeply disturbed by the manner in which Islamabad has stolen a march over India after Operation Sindoor. Pakistan's Field Marshall General Asif Munir is reported to have recently held a three hour one-on-one meeting with President Trump.

The full implication of this meeting remains shrouded in mystery, but there are reports that it has to do with Pakistan exporting rare earth minerals to the US, and also participating in some joint venture on crypto currency. An Afghan leader, living in exile in the US, told this writer that the meeting ensured that “India has no cards when it came to dealing with the US.”

Thus, India may be trying to find ways to get back some strength in its neighbourhood diplomacy. Working with Afghanistan, though led by a US proscribed organisation, was the first step. The second was its quiet support to Afghanistan when it retaliated against Pakistan. It is an unusual scrap, but it saw many deaths on both sides. Who asked for a ceasefire is unknown, but Pakistan and its policy to attain strategic depth look badly bruised.

On the contrary, while there has been diplomatic denial of the Trump's claims about Modi agreeing to stop the import of Russian oil by the Ministry of External Affairs, there is little clarity about how India will get the weight of US tariffs off its head without refraining to purchase from Russia.

And then, there is the ticklish issue of India’s membership of BRICS. Trump wants BRICS to go bust, but it is unlikely to end soon.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan hopes that India will rebuild its old ties and that includes resuming cross-border trade. After Operation Sindoor, the trade between India and Afghanistan, around US $800 million, stopped as Pakistan does not allow overland transit of goods between Pakistan and Afghanistan. A new beginning has been made by restoring air cargo and flights between the two countries.

The region will be in the news for a while, it seems, even as hostilities are likely to break out again.

(Sanjay Kapoor is a veteran journalist and founder of Hardnews Magazine. He is a foreign policy specialist focused on India and its neighbours, and West Asia. This is an opinion piece. All views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)