Welcome to Foreign Policy’s South Asia Brief.
The highlights this week: Major shifts in Afghanistan and Bangladesh lead to unexpected diplomatic developments for India and Pakistan, India’s army chief announces that it won’t reduce troops on its disputed border with China this winter, and Pakistani officials hold a third round of talks with the country’s opposition amid tensions.
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South Asia’s Bilateral Surprises
In 2021, South Asia saw the end of one of its longest-running conflicts: the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. Last year, the 15-year rule of Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina—one of the region’s longest-serving leaders—came to a close.
These shifts have ushered in two surprising diplomatic developments: deepening engagement between India and the Taliban and a slowly growing Bangladesh-Pakistan relationship.
Since the Taliban returned to power in Kabul in 2021, Indian officials have held meetings with the group’s leaders. India partially reopened its embassy in Kabul in 2022, indicating its willingness to engage with the regime. And last week, one of India’s top diplomats, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, met with Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi in Doha, Qatar, to discuss security and economic issues.
This high-level engagement is remarkable because the Taliban relied heavily on wartime support from India’s rival Pakistan. Taliban forces attacked Indian targets during the conflict, including a bombing outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul in 2009. The Taliban have also harbored links to the Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which New Delhi blamed for an attack on the Indian consulate in Herat, Afghanistan, in 2014.
The end of the war lessened Pakistani leverage over the Taliban. In the years since, the group has refused to curb anti-Pakistan militants in Afghanistan, provoking tensions with Islamabad. This has given India more space to engage and pursue its own core interests in Afghanistan: ensuring that Afghan soil isn’t used to threaten India and working to strengthen trade and connectivity links to Iran and Central Asia.
Meanwhile, Muhammad Yunus, the head of Bangladesh’s interim government, met with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in New York last September and called for strengthening ties. In November, a Pakistani cargo ship docked in a Bangladeshi port for the first time since the latter’s independence. And on Saturday, Dhaka announced a loosening of rules for Pakistani visa applicants.
These are dramatic developments in a relationship that has long struggled, mainly because of the legacy of Bangladesh’s independence war in 1971. The Pakistani military perpetrated acts of brutality—described by many experts as genocide—in a bid to suppress independence fighters.
Hasina was especially resistant to improving relations during her time as prime minister. Her political party (at the time led by her father) had spearheaded Bangladesh’s independence fight; a bitter political rival, the Jamaat-e-Islami party, collaborated with Pakistan during the 1971 war. Hasina’s resignation under pressure last August left a vacuum filled by several actors, including Yunus, who are more inclined to explore partnership with Pakistan.
Though the once-strong ties between Pakistan and the Taliban and between India and Bangladesh are casualties of these new dynamics, these damaged relationships haven’t changed as much as one might think. The shifts are jolting, but the main takeaway isn’t terribly new: The realignment reflects the latest chapter in the India-Pakistan rivalry.
The two countries have long competed for influence in Afghanistan, where India now seems to have the upper hand. And Pakistan’s burgeoning relations with Bangladesh mean that Islamabad gains a friend in a part of the region where it has none aside from Sri Lanka.
Closer engagement with Bangladesh also gives Pakistan influence in a country that borders volatile and sensitive northeast India. New Delhi hasn’t forgotten the massive arms shipment that was destined for rebels within its borders before it was intercepted in Bangladesh in 2004; it saw pro-Pakistan Bangladeshi officials and Pakistan intelligence as responsible.
Ultimately, the India-Pakistan rivalry still casts a long shadow over South Asia, which has already seen it play out in painful ways—from armed conflict in the past to paralysis within regional organizations that prevents collaborations on shared challenges such as climate change. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
What We’re Following
India won’t reduce troops on Chinese border. On Monday, India’s army chief, Upendra Dwivedi, made some telling comments about the status of India-China relations. Though Dwivedi said that tensions have eased since a deadly clash at the border of Ladakh and Tibet in 2020, he indicated that India will not reduce the number of troops on their disputed border when winter weather conditions become especially inhospitable, as is customary.
Dwivedi’s comments reveal that tensions linger nearly five years after the clash in Ladakh, the deadliest border crisis since India and China went to war in 1962. Even after a deal concluded last October to resume border patrols and restore the positions of some troops to pre-crisis locations, mistrust still prevails along the 2,100-mile frontier.
The decision is also a reminder that the October deal shouldn’t be seen as a precursor to a broader détente between India and China, especially since the relationship is still shaped by entrenched disagreements on a range of issues and intensifying strategic competition.
Pakistani opposition talks continue. On Thursday, Pakistani officials will hold a third round of talks with the country’s beleaguered political opposition. The first two rounds came in late December and early January.
The talks are an encouraging development after several years of deep tensions between the government and opposition, fueled in part by large-scale crackdowns on the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, who has been in prison since August 2023 on charges that his supporters describe as politically motivated.
That the third round of talks is happening at all is significant, given the limited progress of the first two. PTI has called for a judicial inquiry into two incidents: violent political protests in May 2023 that targeted military facilities, which the government says that PTI was behind; and a crackdown against PTI protesters in Islamabad in November 2024, which PTI claims caused mass casualties.
PTI has also unsuccessfully demanded more access to Khan to discuss the ongoing talks. Time may be running out: PTI negotiators have threatened to end talks if the government doesn’t launch the inquiries by Jan. 31.
Sri Lanka’s Dissanayake in China. On Tuesday, Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake arrived in Beijing for a four-day state visit. His agenda includes meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping and other top officials on a range of issues, including Sri Lanka’s debt and Chinese infrastructure projects.
This marks Dissayanake’s second foreign visit since taking office last year; his first was to India in December. The Sri Lankan president’s travel reflects how he, much like other new leaders in the region, is looking to better balance ties with New Delhi and Beijing.
India will closely watch one aspect of the trip: The meetings are expected to address the issue of Chinese research vessels in Sri Lanka, which India alleges engage in spycraft. Dissanayake’s predecessor banned the docking of such craft in Sri Lanka for one year, and the moratorium ended earlier this month. Dissanayake hasn’t indicated that he will extend it, but he has said that Sri Lankan soil won’t be used to threaten India.
Under the Radar
Afghanistan International, a London-based news outlet, recently reported that Jeff Rigsby, an American living in Afghanistan, was found dead in his home in Kabul in November. Rigsby was one of a few U.S. citizens known to be based in Afghanistan.
Rigsby, who frequently posted well-informed threads about Afghanistan on his X account, had spent time in the country during the U.S.-led war before returning to live there in 2022, after the Taliban takeover. Other Americans known to be in Afghanistan are there under different conditions: At least three are held captive by the Taliban.
The Biden administration prioritized making efforts to try to secure their freedom—a focus that will likely be maintained by the Trump administration.
Rigsby’s cause of death is unclear. There is speculation that he was killed—by the Taliban or possibly by others motivated by discomfort with investigative work he did on lead poisoning. Others believe that he died of natural causes. There are also many questions about Rigsby himself, including what his profession was and why he decided to settle in Afghanistan.
Rigsby’s friends, however, say that he enjoyed being in Afghanistan and that he died in a place that he loved.
FP’s Most Read This Week
Regional Voices
In the Daily Star, assistant editor Badiuzzaman Bay highlights recent cases of Indian border guards killing Bangladesh civilians. “India has too many unresolved issues with Bangladesh … to let these manageable crises fester unnecessarily,” he writes. “But if it continues its uncooperative stance, Bangladesh should consider taking the issue to the international court.”
In the Print, journalist Karanjeet Kaur laments the recent trend of senior Indian business leaders calling on Indian workers to put in more hours with no offer of overtime pay. “India’s most respected business leaders and start-up founders have made a habit of displaying just how deeply disconnected they are from the realities of working people’s lives,” she writes.
In the Express Tribune, scholar Muhammad Ahsan Khan argues that Pakistan should address its agricultural challenges by resorting to vertical farming, which involves growing crops in stacked layers under controlled conditions. “Its ability to grow more crops using fewer resources in urban environments offers hope for a more resilient and sustainable food system in Pakistan,” he writes.
The post In South Asia, Power Shifts Usher in Diplomatic Surprises appeared first on Foreign Policy.
