A week after US-backed Afghan forces evicted the Taliban from Kunduz, intelligence reports shared with India indicate that the military takeover of the border city by Mullah Akhtar Mansoor’s fighters was planned in Pakistan and supported by foreign mercenaries, including those from the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT) terror group.
A week after US-backed Afghan forces evicted the Taliban from Kunduz, intelligence reports shared with India indicate that the military takeover of the border city by Mullah Akhtar Mansoor’s fighters was planned in Pakistan and supported by foreign mercenaries, including those from the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT) terror group.
Afghan security personnel stand guard on an armoured vehicle at a checkpoint in Ghazni on October 13, 2015. The military occupation of Kunduz, a strategic link between Kabul and Dushanbe in Tajikistan, sent shock waves in the West, forcing US President Obama to commit 5,500 troopers on ground till 2017. (AFP Photo)
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The Taliban forces were pushed out of Kunduz on October 13.
With Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif slated to meet US President Barack Obama on October 22, Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS) has indicated that after the Taliban took over their Kunduz office they scanned certain documents which were then transmitted to their handlers in Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
The military occupation of Kunduz, a strategic link between Kabul and Dushanbe in Tajikistan, sent shock waves in the West, forcing US President Obama to commit 5,500 troopers on ground till 2017.
While President Ashraf Ghani has blamed Pakistan for instability in Afghanistan, intelligence reports indicate that some 250 fighters belonging to the LeT, Jundullah, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), Uzbek, Chechen and Arab terror groups helped the Taliban take over Kunduz. Even though the Taliban were pushed out in 15 days, the takeover clearly indicates that the Taliban, under Mullah Mansoor, can conquer and hold territory far away from their Pashtun strongholds in the south. The Kunduz occupation has also established Mullah Mansoor’s credibility as a military commander among the Taliban fighters. Mullah Mansoor was declared Taliban Amir two years after Mullah Omar died in Karachi on April 23, 2013.
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The role of Pakistan in the Kunduz occupation is evident from the fact that a spokesman of Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security has said that Taliban shadow governor Maulvi Salam was killed on September 30 along with 15 fighters, including one from the LeT.
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The role of Pakistan in the Kunduz occupation is evident from the fact that a spokesman of Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security has said that Taliban shadow governor Maulvi Salam was killed on September 30 along with 15 fighters, including one from the LeT.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
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