A s the saying goes, the enemy’s enemy is a friend. When the Afghan Taliban were an insurgency, they were clients of the Pakistani military establishment. Now, they are the state in Afghanistan. Their return to power in Kabul also brought back old fissures between Pakistan and Afghanistan, two neighbours divided by a disputed 2,640-kilometre border, to the centre of inter-state relations. As tensions between the two rise, often spilling into cross-border clashes, India may be tempted to see the Taliban, its enemy’s enemy, as a ‘friend’.

It may not be a coincidence that Pakistan bombed Kabul earlier in October, just as Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi was visiting India. Mr. Muttaqi’s visit, the highest-level contact between the Sunni extremist Taliban and India, was the cleares

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