With a clever diplomatic move, India has established a direct link with the Taliban, who seem to have welcomed the resumption of New Delhi's historical role as a large-scale aid provider and the restarting of several humanitarian and development projects. In fact, in the past, after the Taliban were ousted in 2001, India was the main regional source of development assistance for Afghanistan after the United States: and apparently the Taliban have turned to India to ask for humanitarian assistance. In June last year, New Delhi decided to deploy a “technical team” to the Indian embassy in Kabul to re-establish its diplomatic presence in Afghanistan. India supplied 40,000 metric tons of wheat in February 2022 and another 20,000 tons through the Iranian port of Chabahar in March 2023, to be distributed through the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), as well as 45 tons of medicines in October 2022, 500,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines, winter clothing and tons of relief material in case of natural disasters. In addition, the Union Budget of India for 2023-24 has made a special provision for a $25 million development aid package for Afghanistan, which has been welcomed by Kabul. And the Taliban have reportedly asked India to complete some 20 infrastructure development projects across the country. A classic example, according to many analysts, of India's famous pragmatism in foreign policy. Despite the underlying lack of trust in a regime that is still closely linked to Islamabad, a regime that has failed to keep almost any of the commitments it made to the Americans in Doha, for India the old saying about keeping one's enemies closer than one's friends makes sense. By guaranteeing some limited form of diplomatic exchange and providing development assistance, New Delhi can in fact ask for a couple of things in return: for example, a guarantee that Afghan territory won't be used to launch terrorist attacks. And so far, despite the fact that training camps in Afghan territory are still active, there haven't been any significant attacks against New Delhi. On the other hand, India has other, broader geopolitical objectives in maintaining some kind of presence in Afghanistan. The Taliban regime is in fact enthusiastically courting other regional powers, such as China, Russia and Iran. And, unlike India, which plays a substantially limited role in the region, China is expanding its diplomatic and economic presence in the country. Beijing has recently exerted further pressure on the Taliban to make Afghanistan part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and thus increase investment in the crisis-stricken country, while pressuring Kabul to maintain its regional and international commitments to counter terrorism. In January of this year, China signed a 25-year contract to extract oil from the Afghan Amu Darya basin and is negotiating other commercial agreements. But despite Beijing's efforts to maintain that: “China respects the Afghan people's choice of independence and respects Afghanistan's religious beliefs and national customs” and that “China has never interfered in Afghanistan's internal affairs and has never pursued personal interests for the so-called spheres of influence in Afghanistan”, nobody believes them, least of all the Taliban. That playing on different tables they have learned well from their spiritual father: Pakistan. So, for some time now the Chinese have also begun to be affected in Afghanistan, given the treatment reserved for the local populations, while New Delhi's star seems to be rising in the country, although India remains critical of the regime. Beijing seems to have made a big mistake if it hoped, as it did, to manage Afghanistan through the now compromised and economically and politically unstable Pakistan. And it seems ready to become yet another victim of the Afghan “tomb of empires” and Indian “realpolitik”.