Chief of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Sergey Naryshkin arrived in Kabul on Wednesday amidst speculation that Russia might arm the Taliban against ISIS-K. A fake news report at the beginning of the month claimed that India is financing the Taliban’s purchase of Belarusian drones with Russia’s approval, but this analysis here of the latest sequence in Russian-Pakistani relations argues that it might have been planted by Pakistan. The purpose, it seems, is to create the pretext for a chill in bilateral ties.
The recent strengthening of Russian-Afghan relations displeases Pakistan due to its ongoing war with the Taliban and accusations that the Taliban patronizes groups that Islamabad has designated as terrorists. Russia’s arming of the Taliban, even if it’s truly only to fight ISIS-K and not to help the Taliban fight Pakistan like some Pakistani trolls have lied is already happening, would thus be perceived as a threat. It’s in this somewhat tense context that the Russian Interior Minister paid his historic visit to Pakistan.
He’s the first top official from his ministry to travel to Pakistan, where he called on the Foreign Minister, Prime Minister, President, and even the Chief of the Defense Forces Asim Munir, the country’s de facto military dictator. That’s highly unusual for any Interior Minister to do and shows how seriously Pakistan treated his visit, the unofficial purpose of which is assessed as investigating Pakistan’s links to ISIS-K, which the Taliban accused it of while leading Russian officials have only hinted at this as explained here.
Likewise, it’s also assessed that he’s tasked with explaining the anti-terrorist nature of Russia’s rapidly strengthening ties with the Taliban so that Pakistan doesn’t overreact to any potentially impending arming of the group by arming Ukraine, which would deal a heavy blow to bilateral ties. Closer anti-terrorist cooperation between Russia and Pakistan could also hypothetically result in Russia requesting that Pakistan investigate specific Taliban claims of ISIS-K camps that the Taliban passes along to Russia.
In that scenario, Pakistan might also hypothetically rely on Russia to pass along requests to the Taliban to investigate specific claims of terrorist camps in Afghanistan, which could gradually lead to Russia playing a crucial role in de-escalating their conflict if all sides have the political will. That remains to be seen, but the salience of Naryshkin’s visit to Kabul and the Russian Interior Minister’s to Islamabad is that the Kremlin now appears to be “hyphenating” Afghanistan and Pakistan as a single pair of countries.
“Hyphenation” used to characterize some countries’ ties with India and Pakistan, which influenced them to take each’s interests into consideration when dealing with the other, and this concept now increasingly characterizes Russia’s ties with Afghanistan and Pakistan. Russia can’t arm Afghanistan against ISIS-K without first explaining this policy to Pakistan or it’ll ruin their ties just like it can’t strengthen ties with Pakistan without doing so with Afghanistan or those ties would also be ruined.
Russia’s de facto “hyphenation” of Afghanistan and Pakistan is aimed at balancing between these rivals in order to accelerate its “Return to South Asia” in recent years. Afghanistan doesn’t have a problem with this, but Pakistan might be displeased seeing as how its ruling elite tend to think of themselves as superior to Afghans, ergo why they might be offended by Russia’s pragmatic policy. So long as they don’t worsen bilateral ties because it, then there’s no issue, but Russia wouldn’t lose much even if they do.
