An Indian TV channel excitedly reported unusual air traffic between Nur Khan Air Base, the high-security Pakistan Air Force facility in Chaklala near Rawalpindi, and a flurry of incoming flights from Turkey. The report did not name the source, but the innuendo linking it to the so-called Mecca Pact (Saudi Arabia-Türkiye-Pakistan) is unmistakable.
The plot thickens with US Ambassador Sergio Gor appearing in Srinagar and Leh within days of a meeting with National Security Advisor Ajit Doval. How much the ensuing spike in India-Pakistan tensions is a fallout of the developing matrix of inter-related events is too hard to tell at the moment. It is up to Gor to explain why he uttered the explosive word “Kashmir” at all so very publicly in Srinagar with Chief Minister Omar Abdullah by his side, and thereby raising dust in India-Pakistan relations. Gor wouldn’t be unaware of reports in mainstream American media that the family of US President Donald Trump made a cool profit of a billion dollars or more by trading in cryptocurrency with the Pakistani partners. Trump would certainly know it is idiotic to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Evidently, Gor did not speak for Trump.
That said, the Mecca Pact opens the gateway for Islamabad to leap out of the orbit of South Asian politics and top up its recent performance as a world-class player mediating US-Iran tensions. Equally, Pakistan is positioning itself as a factor of stability in the Persian Gulf region, which Indian strategists tend to call the “extended neighbourhood”. India has a big challenge going forward.
This overlaps a period when Trump has become more unpredictable than ever. Last week, he sprang a nasty surprise on South Korea, one of the US’s staunchest Cold War allies, by announcing he has ordered the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” participation in its annual joint military exercises with South Korea. Amazingly, Trump projected the shock therapy as “a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile to a country that, as long as Donald J Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful”. Of course, he was referring to North Korea! Trump has since hinted that he intended to resume contacts with Kim Jong-Un, Supreme Leader of North Korea.
Furthermore, Trump has demanded that South Korea pay $10 billion annually for the deployment and presence of roughly 28,500 American troops in the country. It represents a massive multiplier—nearly nine times Seoul’s current financial contribution toward hosting US forces under an existing five-year cost-sharing framework (Special Measures Agreement). It is entirely conceivable that Trump may order US troop withdrawal from South Korea—perhaps, as quid pro quo for the North Koreans ending their involvement in the Ukraine war.
To be sure, South Korea President Lee Jae Myung, a Centre-Left politician, met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Seoul on August 20, 2026 and discussed bilateral relations, regional cooperation and peace on the Korean Peninsula.
Delhi’s policymakers should anticipate similar tremors on the South Asian chessboard as well. No analogy in geopolitics is 100 percent applicable, but analogies are nonetheless brought in as useful tools to explain complex or hard-to-understand ideas by relating them to familiar things. What motivated Trump to depute Vice President J D Vance to dial up Prime Minister Narendra Modi to propose deepening the global partnership between the two countries at this sensitive juncture, when the Iran crisis is cascading, and he is boxed in with no good options to resolve the conundrum?
Trump’s compass is constantly navigating him towards America First. When it comes to Pakistan, there could be surprises in store. The New York Times featured three articles last week debating the future trajectory of the US’s ties with the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan—an exclusive interview with acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi (who is no stranger to Americans having served as a key member of the Taliban’s political team during peace talks in Doha); a ‘newsletter’ from Kabul by the Times correspondent Elian Peltier titled, Entrenched, Embattled and Defiant, the Taliban Celebrate 5 Years in Power; and an opinion piece titled, US Policy on Afghanistan Is a Relic of the Past by Obaidullah Baheer, the grandson of the erstwhile Mujahideen leader and protégé of the Pakistani military intelligence, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who has apparently returned to Kabul, passionately pleading for a rethink in the US policy towards Afghanistan advocating for constructive engagement over isolation.
In his interview titled The Taliban Kicked the US Out of Afghanistan. Now They Want It Back, Muttaqi pitched reopening the American embassy in Kabul. Muttaqi held out business opportunities for American companies, especially in exploiting vast mineral reserves such as rare earths. In a balanced assessment, Peltier highlighted that although the Taliban faces isolation and opposition internally, its achievements in power are creditable.
Conceivably, the thinking within the US Deep State has veered round to re-engaging with the Taliban. Notably, lobbyists like Robin Raphel have come out of the woodwork to speak to the New York Times that it is in the US’s geopolitical interest to do business with the Taliban. Raphel, a former US diplomat and think-tanker with extensive experience in South Asian assignments, has a record of advocating Pakistan’s case. Trump himself underscores the centrality of Bagram Air Base in US geo-strategy. No doubt, the CIA is anxious to resume its presence in Afghanistan, the Iran crisis being a top priority.
The Mecca Pact, which is a defensive alliance intrinsically, can be expected to become kinetic on multiple fronts with significant implications for India: the trajectory of US-Iran crisis; Israeli aggrandisement to grab Syrian territory; Saudi-Houthi standoff; sudden death of India-Middle East-Europe trade corridor proposal; Pakistani drive for a friendly, responsive government in Kabul; further strengthening of Pakistan-US relations; and Bangladesh’s search for strategic deterrence prompting it to take shelter in Mecca Pact. Islamabad’s reported push to convert some of its diplomatic goodwill with the Trump administration into economic support to the tune of a $10 billion US exchange stabilisation fund speaks for itself.
M K Bhadrakumar | Former diplomat
(Views are personal)
