NEW DELHI: On ‘The Gist‘, Ambassador Gautam Mukhopadhaya, India’s Former Envoy to Afghanistan in conversation with StratNews Global Associate Editor Amitabh P. Revi.
“The brazen Pakistani airstrikes(in Khost and Kunar province that have killed dozens of people) are a fairly severe escalation across the Durand Line,” Ambassador Mukhopadhaya says, and are “the outcome of more than normal Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) attacks being renewed. It was only to be expected that things between the Afghan Taliban and Pakistan would get worse,” the former envoy points out, adding, one of the objectives “of the Pakistani project is to turn the whole Pashtun question outward and in some ways to try and erase or eclipse the identity that links the two(Afghan and Pakistan Taliban) together. But blood is thicker than water.” He also discusses the Afghan Taliban reaction, the Pakistani deep state’s “insurance policy” of having links with different terrorist groups, India’s humanitarian(wheat and medicine) aid to the Afghan people, what ground realities mean for India dealing with the Taliban, internal resistance and opposition and China having “positioned itself and preserved its positioning to utilise it as and when circumstances seem right.”
