Cross-border terrorist attacks test Pakistan’s patience with the Taliban

For many of Pakistan’s old-school security and foreign relations experts, Islamabad’s strained relations with the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan are hard to digest. After the Afghan Taliban victoriously marched into Kabul in August 2021, the expectations on both sides of the border were of cosy and warm relations.

For the then Pakistani premier Imran Khan, the Taliban victory meant that the Afghans had “broken the shackles of slavery.” During a visit to Kabul – barely three weeks after the Taliban takeover – when a reporter asked the then chief of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Faiz Hameed what would happen now in Afghanistan, he smilingly said “Don’t worry, everything will be okay.”

There was a sense of bubbling jubilation in the Pakistani camp – right from the corridors of power to the man on the street. After all, Pakistan played a delicate balancing game with the US-led NATO powers for 20 long years as it cooperated with them in fighting terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, but at the same time advocated engaging the Afghan Taliban for the peaceful resolution of the conflict.

The result was Islamabad’s often frosty relations with the Washington-led Western bloc and overwhelming acrimony with Kabul under its pro-US presidents, Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani.

All through 2001-21, while Kabul and its backers kept accusing Pakistan of harbouring the Taliban, Islamabad blamed the Afghan rulers for allowing anti-Pakistan forces, including the Indian intelligence, of using Afghanistan as a jumping board for terrorist attacks in the country.

The Afghan Taliban’s return to power was expected to change all this. But soon after the change of guards in Kabul, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and other terrorist groups escalated attacks inside Pakistan, using sanctuaries in Afghanistan.

The TTP, also known as Pakistani Taliban, is a separate entity from the Afghan Taliban. However the two groups fought together against the American troops.

According to the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies (PICSS) – an Islamabad-based think-tank – since the start of the Taliban rule in Afghanistan in August 2021 till end-May 2024, there have been 2,386 terrorist attacks in Pakistan in which some 3,399 people have been killed – 924 civilians, 1,070 security personnel and 1,405 terrorists.

This also included the high-profile March 26 suicide bombing in Bisham in northwestern Pakistan, which killed five Chinese engineers working on the country’s largest hydropower project.

The attack jolted Pakistan as pressure mounted from China – the country’s biggest strategic and economic partner – for an action against the terrorists.

After investigations, Pakistan claimed that the bomber was an Afghan and that the attack was planned in Afghanistan.

The escalation in terrorism has brought an unprecedented hardening of position against Kabul in Islamabad. And it is not just tough talk, but Islamabad has taken a series of practical measures that further widened the gulf and distrust between Pakistan and its one-time perceived ally – the Afghan Taliban.

These measures included airstrikes on the TTP militants inside Afghanistan, the expulsion of some 700,000 undocumented Afghan refugees from the country under a controversial repatriation scheme launched last year, and tighter control on the movement of the people on the Pakistan-Afghan border to ensure documented immigration.

While these measures fanned anti-Pakistan feelings in Afghanistan, the introduction of passports as a single travel document is also being resisted by many Pakistani Pashtuns, who live close to the Afghan border. They say that the unique nature of this border – drawn by the British Raj in 1893 as the Duran Line – demands ease in travel because the same tribes live on both sides of the divide.

Earlier, most travellers crossed the Pakistan-Afghanistan border without any documents or just a travel slip issued by the local administration.

After Pakistan fenced a major part of its border with Afghanistan and imposed checks on the crossing points, this undocumented free flow of people was no longer possible. The issue has now become a major bone of contention between the two sides.

The land-locked Afghanistan has also suffered because of on-and-off disruption of trade via Pakistan, which often complains that the facility of the “Afghan Transit Trade” is being misused as a large quantity of imports into Afghanistan are smuggled back into Pakistan.

Pakistan’s attempts to curb smuggling have not just angered the Afghans but also many Pakistanis who live along the border and whose livelihoods depend on smuggling or what they call the “informal trade.”

A tougher approach

Pakistani security officials, however, see this toughening of stance against Afghanistan as a new-found clarity in the country’s fight against terrorism.

For them, unstable frontiers with Pakistan suit the “war economy” of Afghanistan, which has been in a state of civil war and conflict since 1979 when the former Soviet Union troops invaded this country. Since then, there has been one round of conflict after another, including the US-led NATO troops’ 20-year occupation.

Pakistan says that at least 45 terrorist groups, including the TTP, are active in Afghanistan, threatening not just Pakistan, but also China and the Central Asian states.

Islamabad’s engagement with Kabul now remains focused on the demand for action against the TTP.

Pakistan has held talks with the TTP and other militant groups in the past. But the security establishment, under the command of Army chief General Syed Asim Munir, now refuses to talk with non-state actors.

Pakistan is using both covert and overt pressure on the Afghan Taliban to deny the TTP space to operate from Afghanistan—a demand that is not easy for Kabul to fulfill. The reason; the TTP terrorists have fought the US-led NATO forces side-by-side with the Afghan Taliban.

The challenge of Daesh also hangs on Afghanistan like a spectre. There are fears in Kabul that any action against the TTP would only provide space to Daesh, which has been carrying out attacks on the Afghan Taliban.

Notwithstanding the Afghan Taliban’s reluctance or lack of capacity to deal with the TTP, the message from Islamabad is clear that there cannot be business as usual with Kabul if anti-Pakistan terror groups continue to operate from Afghanistan in violation of the Doha accord.

However, the Afghan Taliban see the TTP as a Pakistani problem and have been asking Islamabad for direct talks with the group.

This position of Kabul may appear ironic as Pakistan used to take the same approach with the former Karzai and Ghani governments when they asked Islamabad to take action against the Afghan Taliban.

In another major departure from the past, Pakistani security officials say that now only government-to-government level engagements are done between Islamabad and Kabul and the Pakistan Army or its intelligence agencies are no more in the picture.

This situation has also provided space for India to engage with the Afghan Taliban, as some ice has melted between the two sides. But Pakistan security officials believe that ideological differences would prevent this partnership from blossoming between the Taliban and New Delhi, unlike the eras of former presidents Karzai and Ghani.

While Pakistan is talking tough with Kabul, the strategy has failed to yield results so far.

Insiders say that Pakistan’s once much-touted influence in Afghanistan has sharply eroded in recent months. Therefore, Pakistan’s old experts on Afghanistan have been suggesting the current establishment not to look at its neighbour from the narrow prism of the TTP alone.

There is a need for broad-based engagement with the Afghan Taliban. A series of confidence-building measures is required to address the concerns of both sides—from terrorism to smuggling and immigration to trade and investment.

Pakistan needs to revive its goodwill among the Afghan population and attempt to bridge the trust deficit.

The Afghan Taliban also need to take into account Pakistani concerns about terrorism that undermine relations between the two sides.

But both sides appear to lack fresh ideas to help revive and bolster their relations. The irony is that, at least for now, Pakistan appears to be back at square one when it comes to having peaceful and secure borders with Afghanistan and a reliable and friendly government in Kabul.

Pakistan’s Afghan dilemma refuses to fade away as Afghanistan and the broader region’s future hangs in balance.