Pakistan’s Afghan Crisis

Foreign Affairs Islamabad’s hopes for “Taliban 2.0” have turned into a nightmare. (Sefa Karacan/Anadolu via Getty Images) It is difficult to exaggerate the extent to which Pakistan has buyer’s remorse following many years of supporting the Taliban insurgency against the previous Afghan government. Islamabad expected the Afghan Taliban’s return to power just over five years ago to make Afghan-Pakistani relations increasingly cooperative across many domains. But what Pakistan once saw as a valuable opportunity has become its nightmare. When the Taliban reclaimed power in Afghanistan in August 2021, many took for granted that Pakistan would be the principal beneficiary. At that time, there was every reason to assume that Islamabad would have significant influence over the new authorities in Kabul and use it to further its national interests while serving as “big brother” to post-occupation Afghanistan. Right after the Taliban reclaimed Afghanistan, Pakistan’s then-Prime Minister Imran Khan declared that the Afghans had “broken the shackles of slavery.” Islamabad had clear expectations that the “Taliban 2.0” would cooperate against groups that threaten the Pakistani state and work to counter Indian influence in the region. But the bilateral relationship has basically moved in the completely opposite direction, exposing serious limits to Pakistani leverage vis-à-vis Afghanistan and highlighting just how much the Afghan Taliban’s own interests greatly diverge from Islamabad’s. Bilateral relations between Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban have plunged to an all-time low. This month marks one year since Islamabad and Kabul began sustained hostilities over a border dispute and the presence of militant groups—chiefly Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban, and the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA)—on Afghan soil. Both the TTP and BLA have targeted Pakistan with a significantly increased frequency since 2024. With the two countries in an “open war” since February, the conflict has had a devastating impact on humanitarian crises along the Durand Line, while the prospects for deescalation remain very dim. Islamabad has struggled to secure meaningful global support for its military operations against Afghanistan-based groups threatening Pakistan. Russia, China, and Western nations are all focused on their unique interests in post-occupation Afghanistan and the wider region, helping to explain why they are not currently applying greater pressure on Kabul anywhere close to the degree desired by Islamabad. Consequently, Pakistan sees itself as unsupported as it wages what it understands to be a necessary and morally righteous war against terrorism. Today, Pakistan sees the Islamic Emirate regime in Kabul as anything but a counterterrorism ally. As Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhary, the former Pakistani ambassador to the United States, stated at an international conference held earlier this month in Islamabad, Afghanistan is now reverting to its pre-9/11 ways. Other Pakistani officials go as far as describing the Kabul regime itself as a terrorist entity more than an actual government. Kabul is increasingly engaging New Delhi, suggesting that post-occupation Afghanistan will become geopolitically aligned with India against Pakistan, rather than vice versa as Islamabad had planned years ago. This feeds into deep fears in Pakistan about an emerging anti-Pakistani partnership comprising its northern and eastern neighbors. The Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi’s week-long visit to India a year ago did much to inform this threat perception of a Taliban-India nexus. Pakistani officials also allege that India supports the TTP as part of an effort to destabilize Pakistan. Islamabad claims that concrete evidence backs up this accusation and resents what it considers the international community’s failure to hold India accountable. Islamic Emirate officials deny providing sanctuary to these two groups. The de facto government in Kabul holds that Pakistan’s terrorism crisis is its own internal problem stemming from Islamabad’s failures, and that Pakistan is simply trying to pin the blame on external forces. It is necessary to recognize that the Afghan Taliban is not a monolithic entity. A crackdown on the TTP could alienate hardline individuals and factions within the de facto government in Kabul, possibly pushing some toward joining Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP). Therefore, regime cohesion is an important consideration for Kabul, contributing to the Islamic Emirate’s reluctance to confront a group committed to toppling the Pakistani government. At the same time, the Afghan Taliban understands Pakistan’s military operations, including strikes far beyond the border regions and into Kabul, as acts of international aggression that violate Afghanistan’s sovereignty. Officials in Kabul find outrageous and unacceptable the loss of civilian life on the Afghan side of the border in this conflict. Against this backdrop, it is difficult to imagine Islamabad and Kabul reaching a new understanding on their border dispute and terrorism. While Qatar, Turkey, and China have attempted to help broker a diplomatic settlement to the Pakistan–Afghan Taliban conflict since last year, such efforts have thus far proven futile. Internationally, the growing trend is toward establishing relations with the Afghan Taliban, which gives the Islamic Emirate greater legitimacy. This alarms Pakistan. Although Russia, at least so far, is the only country formally to recognize Afghanistan’s Taliban government, a host of other countries such as China, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, and the Central Asian republics have established de facto ties with Kabul. Driven largely by commercial, trade, and security interests, these states will probably not support Pakistan's military operations in Afghanistan at the level Islamabad believes it deserves. The TPP and BLA primarily threaten Pakistan. Meanwhile other countries in the neighborhood see the Islamic Emirate as a necessary partner (even if a very flawed one) in the fight against ISKP—seen by most states in West Asia and beyond as the most dangerous non-state actor currently operating in Afghanistan. Nonetheless, officials in Islamabad hold that if more regional and global support for Pakistan’s fight against the TTP and BLA doesn’t come through, more countries will eventually pay a price. Pakistan is unlikely to find much of the support it seeks from the West, where many continue to view Pakistan through the lens of its own history with violent extremist groups. Washington continues to have a hangover from its nearly two-decade experience of occupying Afghanistan and fighting the Taliban, which consumed vast amounts of American resources and ended with immense frustration and humiliation in 2021. Therefore, although Washington does care about nonstate actors in Afghanistan, including ISKP, TTP, and BLA, and although the U.S. and Pakistan work closely on counterterrorism efforts, it is unrealistic to expect Washington to provide any direct military support for Pakistan’s operations against targets in Afghanistan. In all likelihood, Washington will provide Islamabad selective cooperation in Pakistan’s campaign against the TTP and BLA without taking any action that could risk pulling the U.S. back into a protracted conflict in this region, especially so long as the Trump administration’s focus remains on the Iran War, now approaching its ninth month. Russia, meanwhile, sees its relationship with the “Taliban 2.0” as essential to fighting ISKP, which poses a serious threat to Russia and Central Asian republics where Moscow has vested interests. Concerns related to drug trafficking also factor into Russia's interests in maintaining a formal relationship with the Islamic Emirate. Consequently, Moscow is at odds with Islamabad on how to deal with Afghanistan’s new realities. Russia seeks greater regional influence and trade connectivity while wanting to prevent post-occupation Afghanistan from returning to the West’s orbit of geopolitical influence. Within this context, Moscow has invested diplomatic capital in post-2021 Kabul, and Pakistan should not expect the Russians to subject the Islamic Emirate to any heavy-handed pressure that could undermine Moscow’s relationships with the Afghan Taliban. The most recent meeting of the Moscow Format—a multilateral platform for discussing security in Afghanistan—on October 5 revealed such disagreements between Russia and Pakistan regarding terrorism-related issues in Afghanistan. Looking ahead, while the Russians might be counted on to try to apply some degree of pressure on Kabul privately while providing Islamabad with intelligence cooperation, Moscow is unlikely to impose serious costs on the Islamic Emirate over TTP and BLA sanctuaries in Afghanistan. Subscribe Today Get daily emails in your inbox Aside from Pakistan, perhaps no country in the world is as concerned about the TTP and BLA’s activities as China, whose citizens, investments, and infrastructure linked to the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor have been targeted by these groups. Yet Beijing’s de facto relationship with the Afghan Taliban will shape its approach to challenges posed by violent anti-state organizations that attack Pakistan while China continues playing a bridging role between Islamabad and Kabul. These factors help explain why China will probably not become directly involved in Pakistan’s military operations against groups in Afghanistan. It is more likely that Beijing’s foreign policy toward the Pakistan–Afghan Taliban war will rest on diplomatic pressure, mediation, security assistance, and intelligence cooperation with Islamabad. Pakistan’s war with the Afghan Taliban shows the folly of Islamabad’s past expectations that a former ally could be counted on to help advance its interests. While Islamabad greatly contributed to the circumstances that restored the Islamic Emirate’s rule, it lacks the means to dictate Kabul’s priorities, policies toward nonstate actors, and regional foreign policy. The de facto Afghan authorities’ reluctance to crack down on the TTP and BLA, combined with Kabul’s growing engagement with New Delhi, has left Pakistan facing a nightmarish dilemma that will not be easy to resolve. In one way or another, Pakistan must reconcile its grave security concerns about post-occupation Afghanistan with new geopolitical realities in which regional and global powers’ broader interests are not aligned with Islamabad’s top priorities. Without Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban reaching a new understanding, this war risks raging on and becoming a protracted conflict that will lead to much more human suffering on both sides of the restive Afghan–Pakistani frontier.