RUMBLES OF REGIME CHANGE IN AFGHANISTAN

Recent diplomacy hints at Washington's plan for a change of hands in Kabul. The Türkiye-Azerbaijan-Pakistan axis has a bearing on it.The bus seems to be leaving without Delhi aboard

- MK BHADRAKUMAR

INDIAN analysts are ecstatic that New Delhi is playing the 'great game' in Afghanistan.

The visiting Taliban Foreign.

Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi's five-day itinerary had the desired 'butterfly effect' on Rawalpindi. Indeed, the Pakistani military crossed the Durand Line even as Muttaqi's visit was only beginning.

But within the following week, US President Donald Trump signalled he's watching the developments. American officials contacted none other than Taliban co-founder Mullah Baradar in Kabul to offer mediation. Rawalpindi is moving in tandem with Washington-displaying hard power blending with Washington's soft power-in a heady cocktail of what Harvard professor Joseph Nye would have called 'smart power'. Already, two key allies of the US traditionally active on the Afghan chessboard as subalternsQatar and Türkiye-kickstarted mediatory efforts. On Sunday. Trump repeated that he could "very quickly" bring about a Taliban-Pakistan reconciliation.

Meanwhile, Afghan-American Zalmay Khalilzad has come out of the woodwork, and is in and out of Kabul. Khalilzad was George W Bush's special envoy to Afghanistan (and Iraq) as well as ambassador to Kabul and has a unique background. He hails from the Noorzai tribe usually self-identified as Panjpai Durranis, though many in the Zirak Durranis (tribal confederation of Durrani-Abdali Pashtuns in Afghanistan and Pakistan) dismiss the Noorzai as Ghilzay.

Be that as it may, the close partnership between the Noorzai and the Kandahari elite is a fact of political history.

Khalilzad is also a 'cold warrior' in the think-tank circuit who served in the Pentagon, represented Big Oil, and enjoys the confidence of the intelligence establishment and the Republican party. He is raring to reclaim his niche in the Trump administration's plans of encirclement of Russia.