Geography has never been kind to Pakistan. The country inherited a nine times larger adversarial state in India following the Indian Subcontinent’s partition in 1947. Likewise, geographical incongruity between Pakistan’s western and eastern wings (now Bangladesh) was among the factors that resulted in the latter’s separation in 1971. Similarly, the Russian and U.S. interventions in Afghanistan over the last four decades have created a plethora of security, political and economic challenges for Islamabad.
Against this backdrop, formulating a regional policy vis-à-vis a volatile and ever-evolving neighborhood has been a tall order for Pakistan.
Following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, Pakistan hoped for the restoration of peace and stability. However, the Taliban’s return to power and its apparent policy to shelter militant networks like Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which have carried out several cross-border attacks in Pakistan, dashed those hopes.
Since 2001, Pakistan has sacrificed over 80,000 human lives and incurred economic losses of $150 billion while fighting terrorism. The Taliban’s regime’s inaction against TTP has resulted in an unprecedented surge of militant violence in Pakistan. As a result, Afghanistan-Pakistan relations have nose-dived.
On the Taliban’s insistence, Pakistan entered two peace deals with TTP in 2021 and 2022, but they collapsed due to TTP’s refusal to disarm, accept the Pakistani constitution and pursue politics instead of violent means to achieve its ideological goals.
Ironically, despite facilitating the Pakistan-TTP talks in Afghanistan, the Taliban officially deny the group’s presence in the country.
At any rate, Pakistan has engaged the Taliban regime to tackle the TTP issue with several proposals, such as kinetic action, using ideological leverage over the group to desist from cross-border attacks as well as disarming and relocating the group’s militants from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border areas. However, the Taliban still insist on peace talks as the way out. The issue of cross-border terrorism has resulted in repeated border closures, negatively impacting trade and people’s movement. The deadlock over TTP has also undermined diplomatic engagements between the two sides.
Disappointed by the Taliban’s refusal to act against TTP, in clear violation of the Doha Agreement 2020, Pakistan has thrice carried out airstrikes against the terror group’s hideouts in Afghanistan in 2023 and 2024. The last airstrike was launched on December 24 in Paktika’s Barmal district in retaliation to TTP’s December 21 attack in South Waziristan which left 16 security personnel dead. Terming Pakistan’s airstrikes as a violation of Afghan sovereignty, the Taliban retaliated at several points on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Pakistan’s reappointed Special Representative for Afghanistan Muhammad Sadiq was in Kabul at the time of the airstrikes to condole former Afghan Minister for Refugees Khalilur Rehman Haqqani’s killing as well as discuss security and political issues. During his visit, Sadiq met with Afghanistan’s Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi and the Deputy Prime Minister for Political Affairs Maulvi Kabir.
The apparent disconnect between Pakistan’s diplomatic and security institutions, apparent in their near-simultaneous engagement in diplomacy and airstrikes, generates an impression of confusion and disarray in the country’s Afghan policy. However, the talk-fight approach provides important insights into the broad contours of Pakistan’s new Afghan policy. Islamabad will now simultaneously work on multiple fronts with Kabul to break the diplomatic deadlock, resolve border disputes, refugees challenge and political differences without compromising on its internal security and regional interests.
Critically, the retaliatory airstrikes against TTP hideouts in Afghanistan are not going to be a new normal. However, Pakistan will not shy away from responding with force in future if TTP’s cross-border attacks from Afghanistan persist. Concurrently, Pakistan’s spy chief Lieutenant General Asim Malik visited Tajikistan on December 30. Seemingly, Pakistan is seeking partners in the region which also view terrorist groups operating from Afghanistan as a security threat. Since the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan, Tajik President Emomali Rahmon has termed Taliban-ruled Afghanistan as a threat to Tajikistan and Central Asia. The anti-Taliban National Resistance Front (NRF) of Ahmad Massoud also maintains a presence in Tajikistan.
Malik’s Tajikistan visit is meant to exert more pressure on the Taliban to reconsider its strategic calculus of harboring TTP. In other words, by launching retaliatory airstrikes against TTP hideouts in Afghanistan and engaging with Tajikistan where NRF resides, Pakistan is going to increase the political and strategic costs for the Taliban for hosting TTP. In response, the Taliban’s Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi met with India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri in Dubai and termed India “a significant regional and economic partner.”
The reappointment of Muhammad Sadiq, who served as Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan from 2008 to 2014 and as the Special Representative from 2020 to March 2023, underscores Pakistan’s desire to diplomatically engage the Taliban. Sadiq has great knowledge of the region and enjoys a good reputation in Kabul.
One of the options proposed by the Taliban regime to address the TTP issue was to relocate its fighters from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border areas to other parts of the country provided Pakistan paid the financial cost. Reportedly, prior to the December 24 airstrikes, the Taliban were contemplating moving TTP fighters to Ghazni with UAE’s financial assistance. However, the airstrikes scuttled that process.
In a recent private trip to Pakistan, the UAE’s President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan met with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. Subsequently, Afghanistan’s Interim Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani and the Intelligence Chief Abdul Haq Wasiq met him in the UAE. This could rekindle the process of relocating TTP fighters to Ghazni. Reportedly, on January 27, around 123 TTP families were shifted to Ghazni in a bid to stop TTP’s cross-border violence.
In sum, under a new multiprong Afghan policy, Pakistan will engage the Taliban diplomatically and politically to prevent security problems undermining other aspects of the Afghanistan-Pakistan ties.
Indeed, security remains the defining feature of the current trajectory of the Afghanistan-Pakistan ties and dominates the latter’s new Afghan policy. However, the new policy is not security-centric and pays equal attention to political and diplomatic engagement to expand economic cooperation and pursue policies of regional connectivity, such as the Trans-Afghan railway project which seeks to link Central Asia with seaports in Pakistan through Afghanistan.
However, it remains to be seen if the two countries will be able to isolate their security issues from other aspects of their complex and multifaceted ties.