At a Shared Symbol of Jihad, the Taliban Defy Their Old Ties With Pakistan

AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe Afghan Taliban foreign minister arrived at the Islamic seminary to a rock stars welcome. Students and teachers swarmed around his limo. Crowds of people streamed past me just to catch a glimpse of him.But this was not in Afghanistan. The seminary he was visiting was in India, a country that had long kept its distance from the Taliban during their decades as an insurgency that New Delhi saw as a proxy for its archenemy, Pakistan.During his first official visit to India last month, the Afghan foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, received the warmest welcome. He stood for photographs with officials in New Delhi after they promised to elevate Indias mission in Kabul to a full embassy for the first time in years. And I watched him openly beaming during his pilgrimage to the Deoband seminary in northern India, the spiritual source of the Talibans twinned creeds of conservative religion and holy war.The whole visit seemed to be a message of defiance to Pakistans powerful military, once the benefactors of the Talibans insurgency in Afghanistan, but increasingly at odds with them now that the movement is in power in Kabul.ImageThe Afghan foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, at left in the door frame, at a guesthouse near the seminary.Credit...Anushree FadnavisReutersThrough the years, Pakistan has taken any overture toward India as an inherently hostile act, and Mr. Muttaqis visit clearly crossed some line. Within hours of his arrival in India, Pakistans military was conducting airstrikes on the Afghan capital, an unprecedented escalation between the former allies that set off a wave of tit-for-tat violence and put both countries on a kind of war footing for a week.Pakistani officials accuse Afghanistans rulers of supporting a resurgent Pakistani Taliban offensive by hosting and sheltering militants who have struck again and again at the security forces within Pakistan.While Afghan officials deny that support, saying that the attacks within Pakistan are by internally inspired militants, they readily acknowledge a kinship with the Pakistani Taliban.