The so-called Islamic State’s (IS’s) recent attack on Kabul University, which killed more than 20 people including students, was a condemnable and despicable act even by the standards of terrorists, but it was not a surprise. Pakistan, in fact, has been telling everybody to watch out for “spoilers” since the beginning of the peace process. And it’s not very difficult to understand just why. Once the fighting ends and stability comes to Afghanistan they would lose their most fertile ground for espionage and insurgency. Pakistan knows from its own experience how Indian, and also Afghan, intelligence funded, trained, and armed militias that carried out terrorist operations here and killed upwards of 70,000 people. Naturally, the Indians will do what they can to retain this leverage. And in this they seem to have found a willing partner in IS. Since IS needs the war to go on so there are American soldiers around to target and kill, and the Indians would also like the uncertainty to continue for its own plans to succeed, there is a natural convergence of interests. That is why it is no surprise at all that some groups have started calling IS the Indian intelligence service in Afghanistan.

This is a very serious matter that needs to be settled at once. So far IS has managed to carry out a pretty successful transfer of attention from the Middle East to Afghanistan primarily because the Afghan army has been overstretched and unable to meet this threat, the Americans were just not interested and the Taliban had to do what little they could on their own to keep its advances in check. But now that it poses a very real danger to the peace process something must be done about it at once. And once the Americans begin to look into who is propping it up they will understand that Pakistan was right about India’s sole role in Afghanistan all along, just like it was right that the war would only end when the Americana and Afghan governments talk to the Taliban. Surely, that would be a jaw-dropping moment, especially for the Americans, since they have placed India right at the centre of their Pivot to Asia policy that is meant to contain China’s global rise by keeping it on its toes in the region. And since it is only a matter of time now before India’s role as the supporter-in-chief of IS is exposed, it seems like a pretty fair bet that US-India relations might sour a bit in the not-too-distant future.

Surely, nobody needs to be reminded just how difficult the path to peace has been. The way the Americans suddenly went back on almost two decades of war policy and began talking directly to the Taliban, without even taking the trouble to inform the legitimate Afghan government in Kabul, might not have been possible with a less erratic and unpredictable man in the White House. But now that so many countries have got together to push the process to the point where the intra-Afghan dialogue is already under way in Doha, any and all “spoilers” must be quickly identified and eliminated. Already Zalmay Khalilzad, US special envoy, seemed at his wit’s end the other day in a meeting with the Pakistani military command, and lamented the painful lack of progress despite six weeks of talks. For India to get IS to whip up some violence and terrorism at this sensitive time, that too by targeting the softest of civilian targets, could bring the whole thing down like a house of cards and therefore is simply unacceptable.

At a time when countries from the region and beyond are thoroughly invested in peace, all the bad guys and their puppet masters need to be named and shamed. And while that is being done, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to also look at some of their other covert as well as inhuman activities in the region. For Afghanistan is not the only place in South Asia crying for peace, nor is it the only place where India is complicit in breaking international law or orchestrating the gravest violations of human rights. The Afghan endgame may well sound the death knell for India’s covert designs in this area.