Asia Communique Special Edition
Liu Zongyi: After Its Aerial Defeat, India Is “Stirring Up” the Taliban While Spreading Rumors About China and Pakistan
Hello Readers,
Today, I am bringing you a translation of an interview with Liu Zongyi, Director and Senior Research Fellow at the Center for South Asian Studies, Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (SIIS), about the tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and China’s role.
Profile — Liu Zongyi
Liu Zongyi is Director and Senior Research Fellow at the Center for South Asian Studies, Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (SIIS).
He specializes in India’s foreign and economic policy, China’s diplomacy toward South Asia, and regional security frameworks such as BRICS and the G20.
Liu has served as a visiting scholar at the German Institute of Development, CSIS (Washington), OECD, and leading think tanks in India and Pakistan.
He holds degrees from the China Foreign Affairs University and the Johns Hopkins–Nanjing Center.
Within Chinese policy circles, Liu is among the most cited experts on the Afghanistan–Pakistan dynamic and India’s evolving regional ambitions.
The Interview: Understanding Pakistan’s Airstrikes and India’s Role
Q: Why did Pakistan choose this particular moment to launch airstrikes against Afghanistan?
Liu Zongyi:
The timing is no coincidence—it coincided with the Afghan foreign minister’s visit to New Delhi. Afghanistan’s outreach to India and the signing of a joint statement with Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar were viewed in Islamabad as a direct provocation.
Pakistan has long feared a “two-front squeeze”—a strategic partnership between Kabul and New Delhi that isolates it regionally. During the Ashraf Ghani era, the Afghan government signed a “strategic partnership agreement” with India, adding to Pakistan’s pressure. That partly explains why Islamabad once supported the Taliban’s return to power.
Initially, Pakistan believed it could control the Taliban government, but that illusion quickly faded. Frequent cross-border clashes exposed their divergence. Facing simultaneous potential threats from both Afghanistan and India, Pakistan struck hard—both to eliminate real security risks and to send an unmistakable warning to the Taliban.
Q: Both sides claim retaliation and deterrence. Will this confrontation escalate or cool down?
Liu:
Hostilities will likely subside soon. Even if further skirmishes occur, they’ll remain limited in scale. Afghanistan’s military capabilities are simply no match for Pakistan’s.
The Taliban called for a ceasefire on October 12, but Pakistan continued deep strikes to make its point—provoking Islamabad comes at a cost.
Regional powers are already mediating. Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern states have stepped in; China and Russia won’t stand idle either. Beijing, through the China-Afghanistan-Pakistan trilateral foreign-minister dialogue and other mini-lateral platforms (including the China-Russia-Iran-Pakistan format), has done substantial work to reduce tensions.