New century, new Great Game?

The fact that Pakistan’s intelligence chief went on a rare visit to Tajikistan in the last days of 2024 means rumours that the Pakistani military removed Afghan Taliban check-posts from the Wakhan Corridor in the first week of the new year – still unconfirmed by Islamabad and fiercely denied by Kabul/Kandahar – are probably true.

Where there’s smoke there’s fire, after all, and recent regional developments all but confirm that a new great game is now effectively under way; one that involves the kind of cold interplay of espionage, sabotage and subversion that only the finest intelligence outfits can deliver.

A few points provide plenty of food for thought.

One, Pakistan’s airstrike in Afghanistan a week before the alleged incident in Wakhan and the joint Taliban-TTP retaliation confirm that the umbilical cord between the Pakistani military and the Afghan Taliban has been cut.

The jury is still out on who’s responsible for ending the long arrangement that emerged after the post-Soviet withdrawal civil war and endured the long decades of the so-called war on terror. But the Pakistanis hold the Taliban responsible because they went back on their promise to rein in TTP and continued to harbour and shield the militia even as it resumed its insurgency across the border.

Two, the way the Indian government responded to Pakistani airstrikes targeting TTP infrastructure in Afghanistan made it seem like the Karzai or Ghani administrations were still in place. Back then Kabul was Delhi’s number-one regional client only and only because of their animosity toward Pakistan. And neither made any secret of it.

Now it’s only natural for (not only) Pakistani security analysts to wonder if Indian intelligence developed links with the ascendant Taliban in the dying days of the Ghani government to keep its own investment from going waste. The recent Washington Post expose of RAW’s infiltration of extremist groups inside Pakistan, especially around the border area, lends weight to such claims.

Three, TTP has regularly hit Pakistani security forces since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, but its most potent attacks have targeted Chinese workers in Pakistan which plays out of the shared US-India script of sabotaging Pak-China relations and, especially, CPEC.

Assuming a working relationship between American intelligence and the Taliban, so soon after the hasty US withdrawal from Afghanistan, wouldn’t be a jump too far considering how the Americans also armed and funded al Qaeda affiliates to get rid of governments in Libya and Syria not too long after fighting them in the streets and deserts of Iraq – the Obama White House’s “leading from behind” novelty that this column finds reason to mention only too frequently.

And four, the Pakistani intelligence chief’s rushed talks with the Tajik leadership, including a meeting with President Emomali Rahmon in Dushanbe on 30 December 2024, just before the Wakhan Corridor emerged in the news, make a lot more sense when you see all the pieces of the puzzle falling into their places.

The Tajik government is a vocal opponent of the Taliban, refuses to recognise the regime, and supports and houses NRF, the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan. So a stop there is understandable as the Pakistani security establishment dotted the Is and crossed the Ts before taking the bull by the horns and turning the page on the Taliban.

The Wakhan Corridor is a narrow strip of land in northeastern Afghanistan, extending between Tajikistan and Pakistan, and it is geographically significant for its strategic location. It separates the two countries’ border areas and serves as a land link between Afghanistan and China through the Karakoram Range.

It was also a point of historical interest in the “Great Game” period between the British and the Russian empires of the 19th century.

Two centuries and at least two Great Games later, could it again serve as a springboard for yet another one that completely reconfigures old arrangements and pits new and old, big and small powers against each other?

Copyright Business Recorder, 2025