The Taliban’s health diplomacy is reshaping Afghanistan’s geopolitical landscape. By phasing out Pakistani pharmaceuticals and inviting Indian partnerships, Kabul securitizes its healthcare infrastructure as a tool of strategic realignment. The shift highlights the intersection of sovereignty, economic statecraft, and regional influence, with Afghan patients bearing the immediate consequences.
The expulsion of Saudi-backed forces from Hadhramawt by UAE-aligned proxies signals the collapse of the Riyadh-Abu Dhabi alliance. In Yemen and Sudan, Abu Dhabi leverages non-state actors to secure ports, resources, and influence, while Riyadh prioritizes state stability and territorial consolidation. The result: a regional realignment where Gulf unity gives way to fierce intra-Gulf competition.
India’s foreign policy in 2025 marks a clear break from its earlier soft-power orientation, shifting toward overt coercion and interference. Once seen as a restrained global actor, India now increasingly relies on hard power, diplomatic pressure, and transnational repression to shape external outcomes. Through cases in Canada, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Türkiye, this article shows how India has adopted a more assertive—and often destabilizing—approach to protect its expanding ambitions, using tools ranging from foreign interference to military escalation and economic coercion.
Afghanistan’s leadership has responded to recent international backlash by amplifying a narrative that frames Pakistan as the root of all Afghan crises. This rhetoric, pushed by senior Taliban officials, serves as a diversion from Kabul’s own administrative paralysis, economic collapse, and its complicity in enabling militant groups like the TTP. As poverty deepens and Afghanistan becomes a hub for dozens of terrorist outfits, the politics of blame has become the Taliban’s primary tool for deflecting scrutiny.
The failure of the Istanbul talks marked a turning point. Within days, Pakistan faced coordinated suicide attacks and intensified TTP infiltration, revealing a dangerous shift in Kabul’s posture and the deepening crisis along the Durand Line.
The visit of Afghanistan’s commerce minister to New Delhi signals a cautious thaw in India–Taliban ties, driven by mutual short-term imperatives. Yet four decades of path dependence, ideological hostility, and the AQIS–Taliban nexus render the détente fragile—more a tactical pause than a strategic reset.
Nearly three years after seizing power, the Taliban’s systematic violation of their international commitments under the 2020 Doha Accord has transformed Afghanistan into a sanctuary for terrorism, entrenched an autocratic regime, and institutionalized gender apartheid. Beyond moral failure, this deceit poses a grave threat to regional stability, international counterterrorism efforts, and the credibility of global diplomacy. Holding the regime accountable is now a strategic necessity, not a choice.
Following the October 2025 border clashes, the Taliban have shifted their battlefield online, using propaganda, selective history, and digital disinformation to paint Pakistan as the aggressor. Through controlled media releases, colonial-era references, and victimhood narratives, Kabul seeks to manipulate regional perception and deflect blame for its own failures.
The deepening India-Afghanistan engagement marks a new strategic era in South Asia. Beneath the façade of humanitarian cooperation lies a calculated effort to constrict Pakistan’s strategic space, from intelligence leverage and soft power projection to potential encirclement on both eastern and western fronts. Drawing from the insights of Iqbal and Khushhal Khan Khattak, this analysis argues that Pakistan must reclaim its strategic selfhood, strengthen regional diplomacy, and transform its western border from a vulnerability into a vision of regional connectivity and stability.
Recent statements by Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid attempt to shift blame for strained Pakistan-Afghanistan ties onto Islamabad. Yet the real source of tension lies in Kabul’s refusal to dismantle terror networks like the TTP and BLA operating freely from Afghan soil—a failure that continues to endanger regional peace and Pakistan’s security.