Ceasefire talks aim to calm tensions between the two South Asian nations, but longstanding mistrust lingers
The armed clashes between Pakistan and Afghanistan in October along the 2,640-km-long Durand Line seriously aggravated the chronic instability in this region. Friends of both countries took action to prevent a further deterioration of the situation.
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The Taliban, which resisted the US, can resist Pakistan’s power, which would worry those who have Pakistan’s welfare in mind. Turkey and Qatar are mediating a dialogue between the two countries, which reached a ceasefire agreement on October 18-19. However, fresh clashes erupted just a week later, resulting in casualties on both sides.
Türkiye, which has played a role in the peace process in Afghanistan as the conflict there has unfolded over the years, is pushing for the ceasefire to be sustained and has announced that a higher-level Afghanistan-Pakistan is scheduled for November 6 to finalize how the agreement will be monitored.
Pakistan’s defense minister, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, has stated that Islamabad’s participation in the talks was at the request of Qatar and Turkey and insisted that any agreement must include ”clear, verifiable, and effective action” by Afghanistan against groups using Afghan territory to attack Pakistan. If the expectation is that the Taliban will physically act against the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), often referred to as the Pakistani Taliban, this is unlikely to be the case.
Zabihullah Mujahid, the spokesperson for the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, asserted that the Taliban desires good relations with its neighbors, including Pakistan, and that both parties have agreed to meet again and will discuss the outstanding issues.
Painful history
The history of Pakistan-Afghanistan tensions is long. For decades, Pakistan has been involved in the internal affairs of its neighbor. Islamabad has a long history of intervening in Afghanistan, either to help oust a government there that it could not control or to help install a government there that it could control.
In a sense, this was inevitable because the Durand Line, which was drawn by the British colonial power in 1893, split the Afghan tribes populating the region artificially. The Afghans have never accepted this line. Fencing and checkpoints by Pakistan to assert territorial sovereignty and control the traditional free movement of people across the border have been a source of tension.
Instability in Pashtun-dominated Afghanistan affects Pakistan, and the other way around — instability in Pakistan’s adjoining Pashtun tribal areas also affects Afghanistan. This explains why Pakistan seeks to acquire a dominant role in Afghanistan as almost indispensable if it is to succeed in stabilizing its restive and violence-prone frontier areas.
To assure a grip on Afghanistan’s polity, Islamabad has sought to prevent India from developing links and gaining influence in Afghanistan, which is why New Delhi is denied transit rights to landlocked Afghanistan through Pakistani territory.
In this context, the recent escalation between Pakistan and Afghanistan is particularly notable, as it coincided with Afghan Foreign Minister Muttaqi’s visit to India. Pakistan expressed its displeasure by launching drone attacks on Kabul on the very first day of Muttaqi’s trip.
Meanwhile, as an outcome of this visit, India announced the elevation of its Technical Mission in Kabul to an embassy led by a chargé d’affaires, although it stopped short of formally recognizing the Taliban government. Additionally, India plans to resume its development projects in Afghanistan.
While relations between Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and India are improving, ties with Pakistan are deteriorating, largely due to Islamabad’s policy toward Kabul.
Cold War rivalry
As part of its strategy to treat Afghanistan as its strategic backyard, Pakistan chose to team up with the US and Saudi Arabia in the 1980s to battle Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, jihad against the communist regime was unleashed for the first time in the region, with consequences that endure. Pakistan opposed the presence of pro-Soviet governments in Afghanistan, as it could not control them. The US, in turn, could not accept its Cold War rival extending its geopolitical presence in the South Asian region.
Even after the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan in 1989, Pakistan remained involved in shaping Afghanistan’s political future. A prolonged period of internecine conflict between the Afghan mujahedeen and the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul followed the Soviet withdrawal. That the key leaders of the Afghan mujahedeen were based in Pakistan speaks for itself.
Pakistan played a role in the emergence of the Taliban. This new Islamist force, which emerged in 1994 from religious seminaries in Pakistan, took power in Afghanistan in 1996 with Islamabad’s support. Washington did not oppose the rise of this extremist force that resorted to terrorism to gain power. The US in fact tried to explore oil pipeline projects through Afghan territory. Having actively supported jihadi groups against the Soviet Union, the US would have had no intrinsic aversion to using extremist Islamic groups like the Taliban for geopolitical and other ends in the region.
If Pakistan supported the Taliban, the Northern Alliance – an alliance of ethnic groups in the northern part of the country comprising Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks, and Turkmens – received support from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, as they feared the spillover of terrorism and Islamism from Afghanistan into their countries. Shia Iran had misgivings about the Sunni extremist ideology of the Taliban. The Islamic extremist ideology of the Taliban (it blew up the giant Buddha statues of Bamiyan, part of the heritage of Indian civilization, in 2001) and its use of terror to gain power presented a particular challenge to India.
New Delhi had deep concerns about the nexus between Pakistan and the Taliban and how that might reinforce the terrorist threat to India. This was a period during which externally supported terror attacks on targets in India were multiplying. The hijacking of India’s IC-814 in 1999 and the way in which the Taliban handled it validated those concerns.
The Taliban fall
The Taliban were ousted from power in 2001 by US military action after the September 11 terrorist attacks that year on US soil, ostensibly because the Taliban refused to hand over Osama bin Laden, who was sheltered in Afghanistan and was seen as the mastermind of these attacks.
From 2004 onwards, Afghanistan was ruled under US tutelage by President Hamid Karzai, followed by President Ashraf Ghani. During this period, India established itself as a development partner of Afghanistan, undertaking infrastructure, humanitarian, and social development, education, and capacity-building projects in various parts of the country – even those vulnerable to the Taliban – with an investment of over $3 billion.
These Indian inroads into Afghanistan were a source of strain in Pakistan-Afghanistan relations because they thwarted Pakistan’s ambitions to obtain strategic depth against India in Afghanistan, which was possible only if Pakistan could superintend Afghanistan’s relations with India. With the US military assisting the Afghan government in fighting Taliban incursions, Pakistan had to play a carefully orchestrated game of remaining on the right side of the US while also assisting the Taliban to regroup in Pakistan and begin the gradual process of fighting its way back to power in Kabul. The Taliban achieved that goal eventually in 2021 with the precipitate withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan and the collapse of President Ashraf Ghani’s government.
Pakistan, of course, felt triumphant at the Taliban capturing power in Afghanistan once again. The head of its intelligence agency even played a role in the formation of the government and the distribution of some key portfolios.
India, on the other hand, had concerns about the way the US handed over power to the Taliban — without any consultations with New Delhi. Leaving behind huge amounts of weaponry, which India feared might find its way into the hands of terrorists backed by Pakistan, and more generally speaking, the strengthening of religious extremism in our neighborhood and the potential of a renewed threat of Afghan soil being used for terrorist attacks against Indian territory, were sources of serious concern.
Pakistan’s sense of political and strategic success in Afghanistan has proven to be short-lived. It is striking how rapidly relations between the two countries have deteriorated, especially given Pakistan’s role in facilitating the Taliban’s return to power in Kabul. Despite Afghanistan’s dependence on Pakistan as a landlocked nation, this reliance has not made the Taliban more receptive to Pakistan’s demands.
Ties between Afghanistan and Pakistan have significantly deteriorated for several reasons. One major factor is Pakistan’s decision to deport 1.3 million undocumented Afghans under its Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan, which took effect on September 1. Additionally, the TTP has allegedly been carrying out terrorist attacks against Pakistani security forces from Afghan territory. Pakistan seeks Afghanistan’s cooperation in suppressing the TTP, but the Taliban are unwilling to comply, viewing the TTP as an internal issue for Pakistan and even denying that they operate from Afghan soil.
Historically speaking, the semi-autonomous tribal areas of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan, which are populated by various Pashtun tribes, have traditionally been restive and have violently challenged Islamabad’s authority. These tribes, in North and South Waziristan in particular, are also religiously very conservative and want a Sharia-based society. Ethnic divisions between Pashtuns and Punjabis, who overwhelmingly dominate the Pakistani polity, add to the problems of governance in these areas.
Since the early 2000s, the Pakistani military has launched several campaigns to combat militancy in these areas, such as Operation Rah-e-Nijat in South Waziristan in 2009 against the Pakistani Taliban, involving tens of thousands of troops and causing the displacement of over 2 million civilians. Operation Zarb-e-Azb was launched in 2014 in North Waziristan, and the latest Operation Sarbakaf was launched on July 29, 2025, in the Bajaur District against militants.
The TTP, which operates in the tribal belt, is also opposed to the 2018 merger of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) into the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province — a move that brought the region under the direct administration of the federal government and ended its semi-autonomous status. The resurgent TTP has played a significant role in the recent armed clashes between Pakistan and Afghanistan and will be a key factor in future negotiations between the uneasy neighbors to stabilize bilateral ties.
RT - https://www.rt.com/india/627218-uneasy-neighbours-pakistan-afghanistan-conflict/