take on a range of assignments for the next decade, including posts in London, until she was appointed as Political Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa in 1988. In 1991, she took the assignment of Political Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, India. Assistant Secretary of State In 1993, President Bill Clinton appointed Raphel as the first Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs within the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, a newly created position within the State Department focused on a growing array of problems in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, including democratic stability, nuclear proliferation, energy access, Islamist and Taliban extremism, poverty and women's rights issues. At the time, Pakistan had not tested its nuclear capabilities, opting for a policy of nuclear opacity. India's nuclear program was at the time also under the same undeclared status, which ended in 1998 with the Pokhran-II tests. Tensions between Pakistan and India over the unresolved dispute in Kashmir were threatening war between the two nations. Pakistan's armed forces and intelligence services were using Afghanistan's turmoil to create "strategic depth" by fostering alliances with the Taliban. Meanwhile, democracy's experiment in Pakistan was witnessing a revolving door of army-induced change between the governments of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. India-Pakistan dispute over Kashmir At the State Department, Raphel tried to reduce tensions between India and Pakistan by engaging both countries in a negotiated solution to their Kashmir dispute. Kashmir was raised on the agenda in Bhutto's first state visit to Washington in April 1995. It would remain a key topic of regional and bilateral discussions with both India and Pakistan throughout Clinton's two terms in office. She left the State Department's South Asia section in late June 1997. Work with Taliban during the Afghan Civil War (1992–1996) During her tenure at the State Department, Raphel worked to support US government policy of engagement and collaboration with the Taliban. She was one of the first senior American officials to meet personally with Taliban. One of the channels for U.S.-Taliban cooperation that she prioritized was through energy. U.S. energy policies in the mid-1990s sought to develop alternative supply routes to counter increasing tensions in the Middle East. The Clinton administration supported oil and gas pipelines to transport Turkmenistan's energy reserves through Afghanistan to an exit at Pakistan's Indian Ocean seaport of Gwadar. Unocal, an American company