In the past five years or so, the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) has grown and evolved in ways which make for cogent security reasons for India to remain concerned with and involved in the emerging dynamics in Afghanistan. The LeT’s Afghan footprints are of special concern in view of the ongoing US drawdown of troops in Afghanistan and must be factored in by those who argue that India will be better served if it got out of Afghanistan.
Post 9/11, the then US President George Bush built significant pressure on Pakistan to wind down its terrorist infrastructure including that aimed at India. Resultantly, even though President Musharraf did not dismantle the terrorist infrastructures existing in PoK, the international opprobrium as a result of 9/11, caused the LeT to significantly scale down its presence from there. The result of this LeT “draw down”, together with the 2003 ceasefire on the LoC and effective counter infiltration measures by the Indian Army, including erection of trip wire border fence, meant reduction of terrorist infiltrations in J&K ever since, reaching its nadir in 2007-08.
The threat from the LeT receded but was not eradicated as the cadres shifted base to the tribal areas in Pakistan where terrorists of all hues and international identities were already operating in and embedded in local populations. The LeT forged its own unique affiliations and alliances and ensured it never hurt its mentors in the Pakistan state. LeT’s earliest foray into Afghanistan predated the US intervention in 2001. But these remained largely confined to training and logistic activities for its cadres.
But from 2006 onwards, LeT crafted an enduring relationship with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e-Islami (Hel) outfit with roots in Afghanistan’s Nuristan and Kunar provinces. It not only began to carry out joint training with the Hel but began to use Hekmatyar’s immense regional and global clout to increase its international profile. Significantly, it became a conduit in the Afghan poppy trade into India, Pakistan and China through the Kunar-Nuristan gateways into Pakistan’s tribal areas. In the past five to six years, LeT’s collaborative actions with Hel in Afghanistan have sharpened and honed its fighting skills to the extent that US troops who have fought with them acknowledge them to be first among equals.
Three deductions emerge from this LeT-Hekmatyar nexus ; one, LeT is strongly grounded in Afghanistan ; two, LeT is significantly financially bolstered by this poppy trade to continue to strike at India with or without state support ; three, the LeT’s Afghan cadres are a top draw and also include fighters from Central Asian Republic countries. In this Hel-LeT concoction, if we add another noxious mix of the emergence of a “Neo Taliban” organisation with a part India centric agenda, then we have a scenario which calls for continued Indian engagement in Afghanistan for all the terrorists threat these non-state actors/terrorist organisations represent to India from Afghanistan.
This Neo-Taliban group was created by the erstwhile and now reportedly killed Commander, Ilyas Kashmiri. Consisting of Arab and former Kashmiri fighters, this Neo-Taliban group fights in Afghanistan under the operational control of the Afghan Taliban. This group has vowed to take the battle into the Indian heartland once they have achieved “victory” in Afghanistan. Says Ryan Clarke in a US Army War College report: “Given the background of this group, this organisation likely has links to Kashmir and can shift back to that theatre if the conflict (in Afghanistan) ends.”
The emerging fallout of India-centric terrorist outfits located in Afghanistan reads like this; one, irrespective of who is in control in Afghanistan, LeT and the Neo-Taliban represent a serious threat to India and its economic interests in Afghanistan (the 2008 Kabul embassy bombing was LeT’s handiwork and numerous attacks on our workers have been perpetrated by LeT among others); two, this threat will remain even if India were to wind down all its economic interests there as the LeT’s main task is to ensure Indian troops remain tied down in J&K; three, LeT’s growing strength in Afghanistan and Fata including financial capacity means it is no longer critically dependent on its mentors and may in future carry out operations with or without their acquiescence thus, India leaving Afghanistan to Pakistan does not mean that Pakistan can prevent LeT from operating against India; four, drug money has helped sustain insurgencies in the Northeast and J&K and its Afghan connection only complements this financial support; five, the period 1996-2001 when Afghan Taliban was in power, represented the time when LeT infiltrations into J&K were at its peak though it made its debut in J&K in 1992 and if you interact with Army officers who operated in J&K in 1992-93, they will tell you of the Afghan fighters killed on the LoC in that period. Today, the number of Pashto-speaking militants operating in J&K has gone down drastically but they can still be diverted from Afghanistan.
Therefore, as in the past, so in the future, Afghanistan will deserve our attention not only for our historic ties, friendly people-to-people contacts, economic interests but also for security reasons. It is nobody’s case that India-Pakistan relations must get a move on, as they are poised to now, in view of the recent positive atmospherics amidst a recognition that like US-China and India-China, India-Pakistan, too can trade even as we disagree, politically. India will continue to remain deeply concerned with the LeT and “Neo-Taliban” threat emerging from Afghanistan. India has to secure its citizens from terror strikes and its Afghan engagement must also focus on intelligence gathering on LeT and the Neo-Taliban’s nefarious designs towards India.

Rohit Singh is an associate fellow at the Centre for Land Warfare Studies, New Delhi