The Fake Video Is Wrong. Pakistan Still Has an India-Israel-Afghanistan Problem

 

A viral video claims that Israel, India and Afghanistan are coordinating against Pakistan. The evidence does not support a formal anti-Pakistan alliance, but real strategic relationships beneath the claim deserve closer scrutiny.

A video arrived on my phone in Karachi with the sort of warning Pakistanis have heard for decades. A man spoke urgently about Israel and India joining Afghanistan against Pakistan, while clips of Narendra Modi and Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to provide proof. I watched it again because some parts of the story sounded familiar, and familiar claims can become dangerous when real geopolitical changes sit underneath them.

Then the evidence started breaking.

A Netanyahu clip carrying the same allegation had already circulated online in February 2026. It made the Israeli prime minister appear to announce support and a special aid package for Afghanistan at Modi's request, but iVerify Pakistan traced the footage to Netanyahu's original speech and concluded that the viral version was doctored. India Today examined a related clip of Modi speaking in Israel and found that the Afghanistan remarks attributed to him had been digitally inserted.

I therefore do not accept the central claim made by the video I received. I have found no credible public evidence that Israel and India have formed a three-country military alliance with Afghanistan for the purpose of attacking or destroying Pakistan. Yet calling the whole subject fake news would also be a mistake, because the fabricated story borrows its credibility from relationships that are quite real.

The Alliance Is Imaginary. Strategic Convergence Is Not.

An alliance has a specific meaning in international politics. Governments make commitments, sometimes formally, about security cooperation or assistance under defined circumstances. Strategic convergence requires much less: two states can pursue separate interests and still produce an outcome that puts pressure on a third.

India and Israel clearly have the first kind of substantial strategic relationship.

Narendra Modi visited Israel on 25 and 26 February 2026, when he and Benjamin Netanyahu elevated bilateral ties to a Special Strategic Partnership for Peace, Innovation and Prosperity. Their joint statement covered defence and security cooperation, while a separate critical-technologies partnership expanded the institutional relationship further.

The relationship did not begin with one ceremony in Jerusalem. Israeli defence officials travelled to India again in June 2026 for high-level meetings aimed at expanding defence and industrial cooperation, with Israel's Ministry of Defense calling India a key strategic partner. Ministries meet, defence companies build longer relationships, and each country's security establishment gains more opportunities to understand the other.

From Karachi, I take such institutional links more seriously than the dramatic editing of a forwarded video. Governments can sign communiqués in a few minutes; relationships between defence bureaucracies accumulate over years, usually far from public attention. Pakistan does not need to imagine Mossad officers sitting in an Afghan command room to recognise that India has acquired a powerful security partner.

Afghanistan complicates the picture.

India spent heavily there during the two decades before the Taliban returned to Kabul in August 2021. India's Ministry of External Affairs put its development partnership at about $3 billion, covering hundreds of projects across Afghanistan's 34 provinces. The Afghan Parliament building became one of the most visible symbols of that presence, while the Salma Dam in Herat carried another kind of influence: concrete, electricity and a name linking Afghanistan publicly to India.

Then Kabul fell.

India Lost Kabul, Then Started Walking Back In

The Taliban victory initially looked like a geopolitical setback for India. New Delhi had backed the previous Afghan republic and shut its embassy after the Taliban takeover, while many Pakistanis assumed Indian influence had suffered a lasting defeat. By 2022, however, India had restored a limited diplomatic presence in Kabul.

The return became harder to ignore in January 2025.

After talks between Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri and Taliban acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban described India as a "significant regional and economic partner." India explored more development work while both governments discussed trade through Iran's Chabahar Port, a route that gives Afghanistan access to the sea without passing through Pakistan.

The diplomatic relationship moved further in October 2025. During Muttaqi's visit to New Delhi, India announced that it would upgrade its Kabul mission to an embassy, even though New Delhi had not formally recognised the Taliban government. A movement India had opposed for years was now talking business with Indian ministers because states can carry old hostility while discovering new uses for each other.

The pattern continued this year.

On 8 July 2026, Indian Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan met Afghan Agriculture Minister Ataullah Omari to discuss wider cooperation and preparations for a long-term agricultural framework. On 1 September, Indian and Afghan officials held another meeting of their Joint Working Group on Trade, Commerce and Investment, where the agenda included customs cooperation and banking links, along with cargo connectivity.

The video turns meetings like those into evidence of a war plan. I see something less spectacular and more believable: India is rebuilding access inside Afghanistan through official channels, while Kabul gains alternatives to relying so heavily on Pakistan.

No secret pact is necessary.

The Missing Side of the Triangle Matters

The viral story asks viewers to imagine a neat triangle. India connects to Israel, India connects to Afghanistan, so Israel must somehow connect to Afghanistan as part of the same anti-Pakistan project.

The evidence does not support that geometry.

Of the three supposed sides of the triangle, the Israel-Afghanistan connection is plainly the weakest in the public record I reviewed. I found no treaty or strategic partnership comparable to the India-Israel relationship, nor a bilateral institutional process resembling the expanding India-Afghanistan engagement. In March 2026, the Taliban's own Foreign Ministry publicly condemned Israeli and American attacks on Iran, language hardly suggestive of an emerging Afghan-Israeli strategic bloc.

A misinformation producer can hide that missing link with editing.

Put Modi beside Netanyahu. Add Afghanistan to the narration, then let a dramatic soundtrack perform the work that evidence cannot. The viewer sees three countries on the screen and begins to treat visual proximity as political coordination.

Foreign policy does not work like a WhatsApp collage.

India can cooperate intensely with Israel while pursuing a separate Afghanistan policy for its own reasons. Kabul can expand relations with India without becoming an Israeli partner. Separate relationships may still create problems for Pakistan, but calling them an alliance substitutes a dramatic word for the harder task of examining interests.

Pakistan's Western Anxiety Has Older Roots

I grew up hearing variations of the phrase "two-front threat" whenever Pakistan's strategic position came up. India sat to the east. Afghanistan occupied the western border, where the Durand Line dispute and Kabul's political instability repeatedly complicated Pakistani calculations.

The Taliban victory did not settle that problem.

Relations between Islamabad and Taliban-led Afghanistan later deteriorated badly as Pakistan accused militant groups operating from Afghan territory of carrying out attacks inside Pakistan. Kabul has disputed Pakistan's account of responsibility, while tensions have repeatedly spilled across the border. The old assumption that a Taliban government would automatically give Pakistan a secure western flank has not survived contact with events.

India now sits inside that argument.

On 1 July 2026, Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs explicitly accused India of "actively aiding and sponsoring terrorist groups operating from Afghan soil against Pakistan." Pakistan repeated similar allegations during later briefings, including a 2 September statement claiming that Indian actors supported militants operating against Pakistan from Afghanistan.

Those are official Pakistani allegations. I will not quietly convert them into independently proven facts simply because they come from Islamabad.

Evidence of growing India-Afghanistan engagement is public and easily documented. A claim that India directed, financed or enabled a particular terrorist attack from Afghan territory requires a different evidentiary standard, including material that independent investigators can test. Pakistan may possess intelligence that remains classified, but readers outside the state cannot verify intelligence merely because an official says it exists.

The distinction protects the argument from propaganda on both sides.

Pakistan Does Have an India Problem on Its Western Flank

I will say something a cautious commentator may avoid: Pakistan does have an India problem on its western flank.

I mean influence and strategic competition. I am not claiming that a proven Indian proxy war operates from Afghanistan, because the public evidence available to me does not justify that conclusion.

India does not need control of Kabul to complicate Pakistani strategy.

As Afghanistan develops trade routes that reduce its dependence on Pakistani territory, Islamabad loses part of the transit leverage geography once gave it. Chabahar matters for precisely that reason. A truck route or banking channel looks dull next to a missile battery, yet infrastructure can quietly change the bargaining power between states for decades.

I know this instinctively from another field.

In cross-border banking, people often notice power only when an account freezes or a payment suddenly fails. Much of the real power developed earlier, inside correspondent relationships and access arrangements that seemed technical until somebody discovered how costly they were to replace. State influence often grows in the same unglamorous fashion.

India's Afghan strategy has long used such instruments.

A parliament building does not fire shells. Neither does a dam, yet large development projects create visibility and political memory, especially when local officials spend years dealing with the country that financed them. India's $3 billion development portfolio gave New Delhi something military deployments alone could never guarantee: relationships embedded in Afghan institutions before the Taliban returned.

Pakistan's difficulty now comes from the Taliban's own agency.

Kabul does not need to become pro-India to use India as leverage against Pakistan. Afghan officials need only preserve enough room to trade elsewhere and talk to New Delhi when relations with Islamabad sour. For a Pakistani strategist looking west from Rawalpindi, that possibility matters even when no conspiracy exists.

The Fake Video Accidentally Points Toward a Real Shift

I looked again at the forwarded clip after reading the official documents. On the small phone screen, political relationships appeared almost childishly simple, with famous faces placed beside one another until geography turned into conspiracy.

The real map refused to cooperate.

India has deepened a formal strategic relationship with Israel. It has also returned to sustained engagement with Taliban-led Afghanistan, and the September 1 trade meeting shows that process remains active today. Neither fact proves the existence of an Israeli-Indian-Afghan alliance against Pakistan.

Yet Pakistan cannot safely dismiss what remains after the fake material is removed.

A decade ago, many Pakistani discussions treated Taliban control of Kabul as a development that would sharply reduce Indian influence in Afghanistan. The Taliban returned, but India eventually returned too, while Islamabad's own relationship with Kabul became increasingly hostile. History has produced a result far messier than the strategic slogans that preceded it.

Israel adds weight to India's wider position, not proof of an Afghan conspiracy.

Pakistan therefore confronts a problem that is harder to package into a viral video. Countries with different motives can develop overlapping interests that narrow another state's choices without ever creating the secret command structure that conspiracy theories promise.

The video offered certainty. Maps rarely do.

I keep looking west from Karachi toward Afghanistan, then at India's growing reach into the same political space. The lines refuse to form the perfect triangle shown on a phone screen, but they do not disappear either.