PAKISTAN DESCENDING INTO CHAOS, DANGER OF CROSS-BORDER INFLUX

The risk for India is that the turmoil in Pakistan could ignite a flood of refugees into India, among which would be numerous agents of the Sino-Pakistan effort to weaken India.

- MADHAV NALAPAT

Internal reports of security agencies in Pakistan are giving a grim picture of the situation in the country. The high-handed approach of the Pakistan army towards the Taliban regime that came back to power in 2021 courtesy the Biden pullout from Afghanistan rankled younger Pashtuns in particular. When they took back control of Kabul for the first time since their rout in 2001, three of the six factions comprising the Taliban were what was termed by this columnist as "Free Taliban". The term referred to those who were outside the two factions controlled by GHQ Rawalpindi and the faction controlled by the PLA (People's Liberation Army of China).

More than 80 per cent of the cadre comprised younger elements, who were part of the "Free Taliban". The other three factions contained mostly older cadres, most of whom had been corrupted by money and other means by GHQ Rawalpindi and the PLA. The younger elements held them in contempt and over the years, began taking away more and more authority from them, a process that was almost complete by 2021, when the Taliban took over the country again. Both GHQ Rawalpindi as well as the PLA acted under the assumption that they had control over the Taliban, as was the case in the 1980s so far as GHQ Rawalpindi was concerned. They were in for a surprise, as the overbearing attitude of the Pakistan Army combined with the systematic effort to loot the mineral wealth of Afghanistan by Chinese entities soured the Taliban towards the two. In an effort to get fairer prices for their mineral wealth than what the Chinese were offering them, the Taliban turned to other countries for help, notably India.