Kabul and a Strategic Triangle

In the wake of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban takeover, three major regional states—Pakistan, India, and the People’s Republic of China (PRC)—all have significant and overlapping stakes in the future of Afghanistan. As the Taliban struggles to govern an utterly impoverished land, all three have been carefully monitoring developments in the country. Simultaneously, they are keeping a close watch on the choices of the other two. As this essay argues, all three states are keen on ensuring that they will be able to wield a modicum of influence in the country for different as well as overlapping reasons. Pakistan’s goals will remain geostrategic: ensuring that the Taliban maintain their anti-India stance and sympathy for Islamabad’s concerns. The PRC’s interests in the country, meanwhile, will be twofold, both economic and strategic. It will look for ways to obtain access to rare earths and simultaneously attempt to ensure that pan-Islamic sentiment does not percolate from Afghanistan into its restive province of Xinjiang. Chinese and Pakistani interests in Afghanistan are likely to dovetail. Consequently, in all likelihood the US will turn to India to deal with concerns about the PRC, and also for intelligence cooperation purposes. This article will first spell out the underlying interests of all three states, discussing the strategies that they have pursued in the wake of the return of the Taliban to Kabul, and will then explore the possibilities and limits of their likely influence in the country in the foreseeable future. Finally, it concludes with a brief discussion of the implications of this strategic triangle for the United States.