When the Taliban seized energy in Kabul in August 2021, Pakistan’s Inside Minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed delivered a triumphant information convention on the Torkham crossing with Afghanistan.
He claimed that the Taliban’s swift ascendance to energy would create “a brand new bloc” and the area would attain nice international significance. Imran Khan, Pakistan’s prime minister on the time, equated the Taliban’s return to energy with Afghans having “broken the shackles of slavery”.
For almost 20 years, the Afghan Taliban fought a classy and sustained revolt, confronted – at one level – by a United States-led coalition of greater than 40 nations in Afghanistan. In that interval, Taliban leaders and fighters discovered sanctuary inside Pakistan throughout the areas bordering Afghanistan. Taliban leaders additionally fashioned a presence in, and hyperlinks with, main cities in Pakistan equivalent to Quetta, Peshawar and later, Karachi.
Many Taliban leaders and plenty of fighters are graduates of Pakistani Islamic non secular colleges, together with the Darul Uloom Haqqania, the place Mullah Muhammad Omar, the founding father of the Taliban motion, reportedly studied. In Pakistan, the Taliban discovered an ecosystem fostering natural relationships throughout the spectrum of Pakistani society, enabling the group to reorganise and provoke a deadly rebellion that started round 2003. With out Pakistan’s support and sanctuary, the profitable rebellion by the Taliban would have been extremely unlikely.
Given this background, what explains the current deterioration of bilateral relations, with the Pakistani army conducting air strikes inside Afghanistan this week – solely the newest proof of the tensions between Islamabad and the Afghan Taliban?
Historic and present elements
Afghanistan has an advanced historical past with Pakistan. Whereas Pakistan welcomed the Taliban in Kabul as a pure ally, the Taliban authorities is proving to be much less cooperative than Pakistan had hoped, aligning itself with nationalist rhetoric to galvanise help from the broader Afghan society. Taliban leaders are additionally keen to rework from a fighter group to a authorities, ostensibly an ongoing endeavour, and forging relations past heavy reliance on Pakistan.
The Durand Line, a colonial-era boundary dividing the areas and communities between Afghanistan and what’s now Pakistan, has by no means been formally recognised by any Afghan state after Pakistan’s institution in 1947. The Durand Line is internationally recognised as a border between the 2 nations, and Pakistan has fenced it nearly solely. But, in Afghanistan, the Durand Line has change into an emotive situation as a result of it divides Pashtuns on the 2 sides of the border.
The Taliban authorities within the Nineteen Nineties didn’t endorse the Durand Line, and the present Taliban regime is following its predecessors. In Pakistan, that is seen as a nuisance and a problem to the doctrine of Pakistan’s ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan.
With the Taliban’s success in Afghanistan, the armed rebel enviornment has seemingly shifted to Pakistan. There was a big spike in militant attacks on Pakistani safety and police forces since 2022 – significantly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces.
Many of the assaults are claimed by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the so-called Pakistan Taliban. TTP and Afghan Taliban carved symbiotic relations for years, sharing sanctuary, ways and assets, usually in Waziristan and different Pakistani areas bordering Afghanistan.
Pakistan handled the Afghan Taliban as ‘mates’ after 2001, partly to weaken any sense of cross-border Pashtun nationalism, and hoping to leverage its affect on the Taliban in developments inside Afghanistan and in relations with the US. In 2011, Michael Mullen, the US army chief on the time, said that the Haqqani Community – a key element of the Afghan Taliban – was a “veritable arm” of the Inter-Companies Intelligence Company (ISI), Pakistan’s highly effective intelligence company. Analysts predicted, because it was feared, that Pakistan’s help for the Taliban to grab energy in Afghanistan would result in a ‘Pyrrhic victory’ with Pakistani fighter teams and different violent nonstate actors feeling emboldened, not weakened, in consequence.
The importance and implications of tensions
It’s unlikely that the Taliban would settle for any Pakistani calls for for motion towards TTP leaders in Afghanistan’s border areas with Pakistan. Crucially, such motion would disrupt the Taliban’s equilibrium with TTP and open area for different extra excessive teams equivalent to Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP). The Taliban leaders are deploying the identical logic that Pakistan used for almost 20 years, dismissing calls for by the previous Afghan authorities and the US to curb Taliban actions inside its territories. Like Pakistan then, the Taliban now argue that the TTP is an inner Pakistani situation and that Islamabad should resolve its issues domestically.
The Pakistani military will almost certainly proceed bombing the Afghan territory with impunity, confronted solely with minor worldwide condemnation. There’s a rising worldwide priority, sadly. Nations equivalent to Israel conduct cross-border air strikes, claiming safety threats. As well as, the Pakistani military, because the long-term guardian of safety within the nation, is below super stress to display tangible motion in countering militancy and defending the nation’s infrastructure, together with Chinese language-invested financial initiatives in Balochistan. Attacking Afghan territory permits for political messaging to the Pakistani inhabitants to centre on an externally enabled ‘enemy’. It additionally insulates the state from participating with the rising home calls for for political and socioeconomic empowerment, particularly by Pakistani Pashtuns.
In the meantime, the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan lacks assets, an organised military and any significant worldwide partnerships to push again towards Pakistan’s assertiveness. In March 2024, a senior Taliban army chief said that the US maintained management over Afghan airspace, explaining the occasional look of US drones in Afghan skies.
Whereas the Taliban leaders have promised ‘retaliation’, it’s unclear how they will do this towards a militarily highly effective neighbour that additionally occurs to be their long-term strategic supporter. Pakistan additionally maintains different levers of affect towards the Taliban: Most commerce into landlocked Afghanistan flows via Pakistan, and Pakistan has hosted thousands and thousands of Afghan refugees for many years.
Nevertheless, Pakistan’s army motion inside Afghanistan will fuel anti-Pakistani sentiments among the many Afghan inhabitants and additional alienate Pakistani Pashtuns. Because the Afghan case demonstrates, insurgencies feed on societal resentment, deprivation and youth disillusionment.
Options require leaders as an instance boldness to handle long-term grievances. A reactionary present of drive would possibly make newsworthy momentary gestures, however attaining peace is normally an artwork of knowledge and persistence. Paradoxically, Pakistan and Afghanistan provide workable pathways for regional financial integration, connecting Central Asia and South Asia areas. Sadly, the shortage of political will and imaginative and prescient amongst leaders for a technology and the securitisation of bilateral relations have hindered prosperity for greater than 300 million individuals in each nations.
