article: Fifteen years after the US-led intervention in Afghanistan, competition for influence - reminiscent of that rivalry between the Russian and British empires in the 19th and early 20th Centuries, and that during the Cold War in the 1980s - is intensifying, complicating an already precarious security situation. Suspicion and mistrust remain the biggest obstacle to stability in strategically-located Afghanistan, which has the potential to destabilise the wider region. Pakistan, considered the main supporter of the Afghan Taliban, has been accused of playing a double game. But Afghan and Western officials as well as Taliban sources have also spoken about the Taliban's clandestine links with Iran for the past few years. And recently it emerged that Russia's ties with the Taliban were warming too. In December the top US commander in Afghanistan, Gen John Nicholson, criticised Russia and Iran for establishing links with the militants, which both countries have confirmed. The US has also pursued contacts with the Taliban in recent years but those efforts have not brought peace. Several regional powers, most notably Russia and Iran, criticise the US and its allies for "failing" in achieving its original objectives of eliminating violent extremism and drugs in Afghanistan. Three major factors have contributed to the shifting of regional alliances: The emergence of IS in Afghanistan - the group announced the creation of its Khorasan Province branch in January 2015 - provided Russia and Iran with the opportunity to make "contacts" with the Taliban. The US's decreasing military role in Afghanistan and a resurgent Taliban had contributed to creating a sense in regional capitals that Afghanistan's fate was up for grabs. The political infighting in the central government in Kabul also raised concerns about political stability both inside and outside the country. Over the past two years, alarm in Russia and former Soviet Central Asian republics grew as militancy spread to northern Afghan provinces close to their borders as well as to China's Xinjiang region. Conspiracy theories in Russia, Iran and China paint IS as an American or Western creation aimed at destabilising their countries. The emergence of IS posed a serious challenge to the supremacy of the Taliban but also encouraged Iran, China and Russia, who were fearful of IS expansion, to review their policies and open dialogue with the Taliban. Softening its approach towards the Taliban is a dramatic and unexpected shift for Russia. Moscow has for years opposed the Taliban, calling them terrorists, and supported the anti-Taliban "Northern Alliance" in the Afghan civil war of the 1990s. But faced with a common enemy in the shape of IS, Russia has changed its mind. In December 2015, a senior Russian diplomat declared that "the Taliban interest objectively coincides with ours" in the fight against IS and that his country and the Taliban "have channels for exchanging information". Taliban sources also confirmed that the group's representatives met Russians inside Russia and "other" countries several times over the past two years. But Moscow's current assertiveness in Afghanistan can also be seen as a tactic to put pressure on the US and to enhance its
summary: Afghanistan's strategic landscape is changing as regional powers forge links with the Taliban and vie to outdo each other in what's being seen as a new "Great Game".