In the corridors of European parliaments and the echo chambers of social media, a well-worn script is being recited once again: Pakistan is to blame for whatever goes wrong in Afghanistan. The voice pushing this line does not belong to a Taliban spokesperson, though the regime approves every word. It belongs to Hamid Karzai, former president of Afghanistan, a man whose post-retirement career now follows a singular, well-funded trajectory: manufacture consent against Pakistan, collect the cheque, repeat.
Let us call this what it actually is. Hamid Karzai has been stripped of any pretence of statesmanship and turned into India’s official mouthpiece against Pakistan. Not a freelance critic, not an independent voice, a kept man, financed and directed by New Delhi to spew a very specific brand of venom. The arrangement is managed out of the Indian embassy in Kabul in close coordination with none other than Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, a fact that turns the entire “Karzai the elder statesman” narrative into a bad joke. New Delhi, unable to stomach a Pakistan that holds its ground on counter-terrorism and nuclear deterrence, has hatched a desperate formula: weaponise a former Afghan president, dress up a disinformation campaign in the language of diplomacy, and run it through Taliban-protected channels.
A man who presided over one of the most corrupt governments in Afghan history, who left office in 2014 under a cloud of unaccounted billions, now seeks to rewrite his story by playing the role of an anti-imperial crusader.
Anyone who has followed Indian politics over the years will recognise the signature immediately. This is the exact same script New Delhi uses at home. When farmers take to the streets, when a train derails, when a cyberattack hits some government server, when sectarian violence flares up, when the economy stumbles, the reflex is instantaneous: blame Pakistan. It is a national tic, a deeply ingrained habit that has replaced actual accountability in Indian public life. And now that same battered, predictable playbook has been handed to Hamid Karzai, who reads it out in Kabul as faithfully as any Indian prime-time anchor.
The orchestration behind the performance is not difficult to trace. Multiple reports, including intercepts shared with this correspondent by security officials, indicate that the Indian embassy in Kabul now operates what can only be called a propaganda cell, coordinating directly with Muttaqi’s office. Muttaqi, who has been hosted and feted by Indian diplomats in Doha and Kabul over the past two years, provides the political cover; India provides the cash and the talking points. Karzai provides the face. It is a tidy little triangle of deceit, and at its centre sits a former president who has sold his voice to the highest bidder.
Once the monthly instalment lands and these figures, according to Western intelligence sources cited in regional diplomatic circles, run well into six figures in US dollar equivalents, the machinery kicks into gear. Educated Afghan youth, many of them jobless and angry, are recruited through front organisations and Telegram channels. They are handed scripts. Social media influencers, some with verified blue ticks and tens of thousands of followers, start flooding Twitter and Instagram with the hashtag of the week: usually some variation of “Pakistani aggression” or “Stop cross-border terrorism.” The posts are remarkably synchronised, down to the same misspelt English phrases. This is not organic outrage; it is a paid product, and Karzai is its chief salesman.
Karzai’s role is to provide the political top cover that these digital mercenaries cannot. In recent months, he has surfaced at closed-door gatherings in European capitals, briefing parliamentarians and think-tankers with carefully curated “evidence” of Pakistani interference. He does not mention that the Taliban regime, which he now effectively serves, has allowed terrorist groups like the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan to operate freely from Afghan soil. He does not mention that Afghanistan’s economic collapse is a direct consequence of the Taliban’s medieval governance and the freezing of foreign assets, not some Pakistani plot. He sticks to his script because the script is the only thing keeping the cheques coming.
What makes this arrangement particularly repugnant is the cover it provides for the Taliban. For three years, the world has struggled to formulate a coherent policy towards Kabul. The Taliban have stonewalled on inclusive government, trampled women’s rights into the dust, and refused to sever ties with transnational jihadist networks. Any normal diplomatic process would have isolated them by now. India, however, has chosen a different path: shield the Taliban from global accountability while directing all blame towards Pakistan. In this, New Delhi and the Taliban leadership have found a convergence of interests. The Taliban get a lifeline; India gets to bleed Pakistan through a thousand proxy cuts, all while issuing sanctimonious statements about regional stability. Hamid Karzai is the lubricant that keeps this dirty machinery running.
India’s duplicity on this front is breathtaking. On one hand, Indian officials lecture the world about terrorism at the United Nations. On the other hand, they are in bed with a regime that hosts the very extremists who have killed thousands of Pakistanis and, for that matter, Americans and Afghans.
What does Karzai get out of it? Money, certainly, but perhaps also the illusion of relevance. A man who presided over one of the most corrupt governments in Afghan history, who left office in 2014 under a cloud of unaccounted billions, now seeks to rewrite his story by playing the role of an anti-imperial crusader. The irony would be laughable if the consequences were not so dangerous. His words, amplified through Indian-funded networks, poison the minds of a generation of young Afghans, convincing them that their real enemy is not the bankrupt theocracy that rules them, but the neighbour that has hosted millions of their refugees for decades.
Those inside Pakistan’s security establishment are watching all this with cold fury, but also with a certain grim satisfaction: the evidence is mounting, and it is being carefully archived. The real tragedy is for the Afghan people. While their former president plays games in European salons, financed by a foreign power and protected by the same militants who destroyed his country, ordinary Afghans go to bed hungry. That should be the headline. Instead, we are forced to debunk the lies of a man who was once expected to build a nation. Hamid Karzai has not just betrayed Pakistan; he has betrayed his own country, again. There is nothing left of the statesman. What remains is a puppet, dangling from strings held tightly in New Delhi, while the Taliban watch and smile. India’s official mouthpiece against Pakistan has a face, and it is his.
The writer is MS Research Scholar at IIUI, a freelance content writer and a columnist.