Relatives of victims, who died amid cross-border clashes between Afghanistan and Pakistan, offer prayers during a funeral ceremony in the Spin Boldak district of Kandahar province on October 16. Dozens of troops and civilians were killed in cross-border clashes last week. Photo / Sanaullah Seiam, AFP
Clashes between the Afghan Taliban and Pakistan, their former protector, are threatening to open a lasting rift that could spark more turmoil in the region.
The now-uneasy neighbours exchanged fire again on Saturday, according to Taliban-controlled media, days after agreeing to a ceasefire and talks yesterday in Doha.
At the Qatar talks the sides agreed to an immediate truce.
Afghan forces were launching “retaliatory operations” on Pakistani military outposts, Hurriyat Radio reported, in response to Pakistani airstrikes on the Afghan border province of Paktika.
At least three members of a cricket team in Paktika were killed and several people were wounded, Hurriyat Radio said, the most recent casualties in a conflict that has claimed scores of lives this month and cast the erstwhile allies into uncharted territory.
Pakistan helped create, arm and back the Taliban in the aftermath of the Afghan-Soviet War.
It was one of just three nations to recognise the regime after it seized control of Kabul in 1996.
Officials in Islamabad turned against the movement reluctantly in 2001, when the attacks of September 11 and the subsequent United States invasion of Afghanistan and quick removal of the regime made continuing support untenable.
When Kabul fell again to the Taliban in 2021, Imran Khan, Pakistan’s prime minister at the time, applauded Afghans for tearing themselves free of the “shackles of slavery”.
The head of Pakistan’s intelligence service was one of the first foreign officials to visit the restored regime and told reporters that “everything will be okay”.
Four years later, relations have deteriorated dramatically. Now, Islamabad worries that Pakistan could be losing the Taliban for good.
The escalating conflict reflects growing frustration in Islamabad over the rise in deadly attacks inside Pakistan.
Pakistani officials blame most attacks on the Pakistani Taliban, or TTP, a group that has sworn allegiance to the Afghan Taliban leader and have demanded the regime restrain them.
Islamabad says the Afghan Taliban shelter and support the group. The Afghan Taliban have long denied TTP was present in their country. A 48-hour nationwide internet outage last month was something of a giveaway: the TTP went offline, too.
TTP leader Noor Wali Mehsud was the target of a Pakistani airstrike in Kabul last week, according to a Pakistani official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because Pakistan has not claimed responsibility for the attack.
Mehsud survived, the official said and reappeared in a video message.
In Pakistan, Mehsud’s mounting insurgency in the country’s northwest is prompting a political reckoning over Islamabad’s former clients.
“Pakistan has long lived under the illusion that the Afghan Taliban would become a stabilising force once in power,” said Muhammad Amir Rana, a Pakistani counterterrorism analyst.
“But Pakistan’s so-called double game - aligning with the US-led coalition while covertly engaging the Taliban - was not a stroke of strategic genius but a historic blunder.”
Ahmadullah Alizai, a former Kabul governor living in exile, sensed a moment of soul-searching when he visited Islamabad last month. “Finally, they’re paying attention.”
A spokesman for Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry, Shafqat Ali Khan, said that “Pakistan greatly values dialogue and diplomacy and a mutually beneficial relationship with Afghanistan”, but will “take all possible measures to safeguard its territory and the lives of its people”.
In public and in private, Pakistani analysts and officials have voiced frustration that one of Islamabad’s primary links to the Taliban - the Haqqani network - has not stepped in more forcefully to end the TTP’s campaign.
The Haqqanis’ leader, Afghan Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, was involved in talks between the sides in 2021, according to Pakistani officials. Their collapse prompted a surge in militant attacks on a scale that hadn’t been seen in Pakistan in more than a decade.
The Haqqanis are now “part of the problem”, Asif Durrani, Pakistan’s former special representative for Afghanistan, told the Washington Post. “The TTP is not ready to lay down arms.”
The Afghan regime blames Pakistan.
Muhammad Ibrahim Khan, a former Pakistani senator who led a delegation to Kabul last month, said his hosts insisted that a deal could have been struck with Imran Khan before he was removed as prime minister in 2022, convicted of corruption and imprisoned. He denied the charges; his supporters say they were motivated by politics.
Khan’s electoral support was rooted in part in Pakistani Pashtun communities that share ethnic ties to Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan.
“The situation changed completely after his ouster,” Ibrahim Khan said he was told.
For the Taliban, analysts say, disarming the TTP could make governing Afghanistan more difficult.
Abandoning their ideological partners could prompt frustration among rank-and-file regime members and help rival militant groups recruit. These include Isis which has a presence in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.
Some members and supporters of the Afghan regime see an internal power struggle.
A member of the Haqqani network attributed the deterioration of relations with Pakistan primarily to the Taliban’s reclusive hardliners in Kandahar, who have also been behind many of the Government’s most draconian restrictions on women.
Kandahar’s growing influence has come at the cost of the Haqqanis, analysts say.
While Sirajuddin Haqqani remains in control of the powerful Interior Ministry, the leadership has pushed the Haqqanis and other political rivals out of other key positions in recent years.
“Anti-Pakistan sentiments are on the rise in the Kandahari leadership,” the Haqqani network member said.
In contrast, he said, “we share many common interests” with Pakistan, including the continuing presence of Haqqani members’ relatives in Pakistan.
Taliban leaders in Kandahar might feel emboldened by their recent foreign relations successes. Russia this northern summer recognised their regime, and China and India hosted their foreign minister for visits.
The Taliban could also be declaring their independence from Pakistan.
“The mujahideen, at high morale, will defend their land and people,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid wrote on X this week.
Any further escalation would probably be felt in the northwestern Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, home to many of Pakistan’s ethnic Pashtuns.
The province has been the centre of the TTP insurgency. Hundreds of Pakistani soldiers have been killed there in militant attacks.
“Preventing the issue from acquiring a Pashtun ethnic dimension is crucial,” warned Rana.
Support for the TTP in the province appears so far to be limited, despite intensifying outreach from the militants that closely resembles the playbook of the Afghan Taliban.
It has been shaken by the heavy toll of recent militant attacks and a belief that authorities are not doing enough to protect the people.
Recent Pakistani overtures to American investors to extract rare earths in the region have fuelled grievances among local politicians.
Khan, still serving his corruption sentence, has jumped on the dispute with an offer to engage with the Taliban in exchange for his release. Khan retains significant political support among voters in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, many of whom feel marginalised politically.
“Their inclusion, resilience and voicewill determine whether Pakistan can finally move beyond its long, costly illusions,” Rana said.
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