Pakistan

By maintaining a pragmatic relationship with Kabul, India preserves a foothold in a region whose geography, not its government, will determine its long-term strategic value. In essence, India’s Afghanistan policy must be rooted not in who sits in the offices of Kabul today, but in the immutable fact of where that land sits on the map of the world.

The Darul Uloom Haqqania in Pakistan is often called the ‘University of Jihad’. This madrasa was founded by Maulana Abdul Haq, a pre-partition alumnus and teacher at Darul Uloom Deoband, and led by his son, Sami-ul-Haq, a key Taliban supporter who mobilised students for the Afghan ‘jihad’ in the coming years.