With the escalation of tension in Kashmir, India fears the consequences of the Taliban's control of Afghanistan

New Delhi fears that the Taliban's control of neighboring Afghanistan will motivate militants in the Indian part of Kashmir, which is mostly Muslim and is currently witnessing rising tension.

This fear prompted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to call earlier this week, at a G-20 summit in Rome, for international efforts to prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a haven for "extremism and terrorism".

Since the Taliban movement seized power in Kabul in mid-August, Kashmir has witnessed an escalation of tension between the Muslim population and the Indian security forces, which led to the killing of 40 people between the two sides, as well as the arrest of hundreds.

Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since the two countries gained independence in 1947;

Both countries claim full control of it, and the dispute between the two countries has sparked two of the three wars that took place between them.

New Delhi has not explicitly attributed the responsibility for the recent escalation to the Taliban's control of Afghanistan, but it has intensified its patrols in the vicinity of the Pakistani side of Kashmir and reinforced some military camps, according to residents and security officers who spoke to the French news agency, asking not to be named.

Weapons and fighters

Modi raised India's concerns to US President Joe Biden, as he declared at the United Nations General Assembly in September that no country should be allowed to use India as a "tool to advance its own selfish interests," which was implicitly directed at Pakistan, the main backer of the Taliban during its rule. Previously between 1996 and 2001.

And if Islamabad has refrained this time from recognizing the new Taliban rule, New Delhi accuses Pakistan of mobilizing the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed groups stationed on its territory, to which it is attributed many of the attacks in Kashmir, accusations denied by Pakistan.

India supported the communist regime in Kabul until it was overthrown by the Mujahideen in 1992, and in 2001 India helped the international forces led by the United States that invaded the country and expelled the Taliban movement from power, and it was one of the major donors to the government that was toppled by Taliban fighters last August.

India fears the re-entry of weapons and fighters to the region, and the Chief of Staff of the Indian forces, General Manoj Mukund Naravane, said that "what we can say when drawing lessons from the past is that when the former Taliban regime was in power we certainly encountered at that time foreign terrorists of Afghan origin in Jammu and Kashmir," he continued, "There is therefore reason to believe that this may be repeated."

Hopes of Freedom

It is impossible to hold peaceful protests in Kashmir due to restrictions imposed by India since it abolished the semi-autonomous region in 2019.

However, some in Kashmir have silently welcomed the Taliban's victory, looking forward to freedom and a similar victory.

A businessman in Srinagar, the largest city in Indian Kashmir, told AFP, asking not to be named, "If they can defeat the largest military force in the world, we also have the possibility of gaining our freedom."

"The Taliban victory gave impetus to our movement," said a former Kashmir activist who trained in Afghanistan in the 1990s and fought alongside the Afghan mujahideen in Kashmir.

A senior security official in Kashmir - who declined to be named - acknowledged the existence of "a measure of panic" in the ranks of the Indian security forces.

Michael Kugelman, a South Asia expert at the Wilson Center in Washington, said Afghanistan's new leaders could encourage an intensification of unrest in Kashmir, adding that the Taliban would not themselves stir up trouble in Kashmir, but those who sided with them were more likely to do so.

Kugelman emphasized that Taliban leaders intend to maintain relations with India, particularly on the commercial front.

On the other hand, the author of the article, an analyst specializing in security issues in Pakistan, Musharraf Zaidi, does not believe that it is in the interest of the Taliban to deliberately provoke the Indian authorities.