NEW DELHI: In the backdrop of deepening violence inside Afghanistan and some hectic international diplomacy to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table, foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale will travel to Kabul next week for discussions with the Ghani government.India’s aim at this point is to persuade the Ghani government to stop fighting each other and focus on the Taliban instead. In recent months, as the Taliban have ratcheted up their attacks in different parts of the country, the Ghani government has been more riven by internal problems than ever before, which was recently evident with the public resignation of the NSA Hanif Atmar as well as his deputy. This, India feels, is sucking the oxygen out of what should be a concerted battle to keep Afghanistan from falling to the Taliban.Gokhale will also get an update on efforts to free seven Indian engineers who had been abducted by the Taliban in Baghlan province in May. There has been no word of them since.Afghanistan was discussed in detail during the 2+2 talks on Thursday. The US side, Mike Pompeo and James Mattis, briefed the Indians on the state of play in the inital talks with the Taliban (from their Qatar office). India is not particularly enthusiastic about the talks but officials said they recognize the US wants to bring things to a political conclusion. There have been several efforts in the past to get to a dialogue state, but have repeatedly fallen through.On Friday, Mattis paid a surprise visit to Afghanistan himself. In comments to journalists before his visit, the US defence secretary said the prospects of reconciliation was stronger. “Right now we have more indications that reconciliation is no longer just a shimmer out there, no longer just a mirage. It now has some framework.” Indian government doesn’t see it that way, believing Pakistan remained the real problem.However, a growing ISIS is becoming a common enemy of the Taliban, US, and even Russia, which has opened a channel of communication with the Taliban — sources say both to counter the northern spread of ISIS as well as to magnify the US’ problems in Afghanistan. India’s repeated representations in Moscow have had a very limited impact. If ISIS continues to grow and pose a greater threat, the fragile equation in Afghanistan could change quite rapidly, with uncertain implications for India.During the dialogue, the US side reaffirmed that the Trump administration’s South Asia strategy as articulated in 2017 continued to be in force. This came after a discussion on Pakistan, where US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo had just visited. The message from Washington apparently was that they needed to see “action” on the ground by the Pakistan army against terror networks. But India was told the US had got a “positive response” from the new Imran Khan government in Islamabad.Pompeo was accompanied in Pakistan by the US chairman joint chiefs of staff, General Dunford, who put energy into the military relationship the US has enjoyed with Pakistan. This despite the US cutting off $300 million in Coalition Support Funds to Pakistan for its intransigence on terrorism. In his comments to journalists, Dunford described his supporting role in resetting the relationship between US and Pakistan which has been at its worst in the past year. “We listened to the prime minister very carefully ... Their objectives were very consistent between the Secretary and the prime minister, and General Bajwa and I agreed that we will leverage the military-to-military relationship to support the Secretary and the prime minister, and more importantly, President Trump’s South Asia strategy.”