To Solve Afghan–Pakistan Conflict, Kabul’s Regime Must Change

To Solve Afghan–Pakistan Conflict, Kabul’s Regime Must Change

The conflict between the Taliban and Pakistan will keep escalating if the Taliban remains in power. Only a democratically elected government in Kabul can lead to peace.

 

By Wahab Raofi

The conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan is not new. The two neighbors have long viewed each other through a distorted lens, projecting historical fears and grievances that obscure reality.

This has led to a damaging state of mutual suspicion, deepened by decades of each harboring the other's opponents. Pakistan's security establishment, seeking “strategic depth” against India, provided crucial sanctuary and support to the Afghan Taliban for years.

This policy fostered deep resentment among many Afghans who blame Pakistan for the destruction of their state and society and view the Taliban's rise as a direct result of foreign interference. Now the tables have turned, with Afghanistan harboring Pakistan's militant opponents. Frequent flare-ups — from cross-border clashes to strikes on Kabul — demonstrate how easily these historical wounds can be reopened.

Since the Taliban takeover, relations between Taliban and Pakistan, once in alliance,  have sharply deteriorated. Both sides have accused the other of cross-border shelling and shootings. Diplomatic interventions — including last weekend’s talks in Saudi Arabia, reported by Reuters as part of a series mediated by regional powers — have yet to cool the crisis that erupted after October bombing of Kabul, and ensuing violent border clashes show the fragility of the situation. A true resolution, however, remains unlikely under Taliban rule, as the deadlock is driven by three persistent geopolitical disputes.

One major issue between the neighboring country is rising militancy in Pakistan's mountainous borderlands, where the Tahrik e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has ramped up attacks in the years since the Taliban took over. The TTP and the Afghan Taliban are in many ways two sides of the same coin. Their relationships — reinforced by “intermarriage,” shared language and overlapping tribal networks — are not easily broken.

They are also driven by a shared ideological commitment to imposing Taliban-style Islamic order. This bond was fundamentally sealed during the insurgency against the U.S. and the former Afghan Republic, a war in which Pakistan's provision of sanctuary and support to the Afghan Taliban was a decisive factor. For the Taliban, reciprocating that support for the TTP is now a matter of ideological solidarity, and in their view, repaying a debt. For many Afghans, it is the bitter irony of seeing Pakistan suffer from the very dynamic it helped create.

The second factor is India’s growing engagement with the Taliban. India has long viewed Afghanistan strategically, as they seek a friendly government in Kabul. It has invested in infrastructure and social projects — such as building roads and schools — to gain goodwill.

This outreach worries Pakistan, which perceives India's growing influence as an attempt to marginalize Pakistan in the region. The rift deepened further when, in October, the Taliban’s foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, visited India — a move that sparked widespread outrage in Pakistan.

According to a survey conducted by Gallup & Gilani Pakistan, 51 percent of Pakistanis aware of the Pakistan Afghanistan border dispute say they object to the recent visit of the Taliban’s Foreign Minister to India and to the Afghan Taliban establishing closer ties with the Indian government. Meanwhile, 32 percent say they have no objection, while 16 percent express no opinion.

Yet the conflict persists — now intensified by the Taliban regime’s growing alignment with India. Pakistan doesn’t want to find itself strategically sandwiched between two hostile states —India to the east and Afghanistan to the West.

The third contentious issue is the Durand Line, drawn by the British and Amir Abdur Rahman Khan back in 1893, which divided the Pashtun population between the two sides of the border. Successive Afghan governments have never formally recognized this boundary, and the dispute remains unresolved. Yet Pashtuns living on the Pakistani side show no indication of breaking away from Pakistan to join Afghanistan.

Afghan rulers, however, often refuse to officially endorse the border for domestic political consumption, even though in practice they have not seriously raised the issue with Pakistan and have treated it as a de facto agreement.

Ordinary Afghans widely perceive Pakistan's border closure and its use of refugees as a political tool and a form of collective punishment, further eroding Islamabad's goodwill. These sentiments are compounded by Afghanistan's harboring of the Pakistani-designated terrorist group TTP and its close ties with India, which Pakistan sees as inflaming the conflict.

Pakistani airstrikes causing civilian casualties reinforce the Afghan view of collective punishment, leading many to hold Pakistan responsible for the escalation and to demand an immediate end to such operations.

Peace between Afghanistan and Pakistan requires a fundamental political shift in Kabul — one that replaces the Taliban’s unilateral rule with a legitimate, representative government. The framework for such a transition already exists in the Doha Agreement, which calls for an intra-Afghan dialogue aimed at forming a broad-based, inclusive political settlement. The ultimate objective is a democratic government grounded in international law and committed to resolving disputes through negotiation, rather than coercion.

The Taliban’s support for the TTP constitutes a clear violation of the Doha Agreement, under which they pledged not to allow Afghan soil to be used to launch terrorist attacks against others. Yet this promise appears to exist only on paper.

The United States and other signatories must ensure that the Taliban are held accountable to their Doha obligations. Until meaningful political change occurs, genuine stability between Afghanistan and Pakistan will remain out of reach — a goal that neither nation can realistically expect to achieve.

Lasting peace is only possible under a democratically elected government in Kabul — one that negotiates rather than dictates, respects international agreements, and represents all Afghan voices.