Islamabad Conference

 Islamabad Conference

Afghanistan's fragmentation invites foreign interference, and only the Taliban can close the door

This week, in a hall in Islamabad, Afghan political figures opposed to the Taliban sat alongside officials from several regional countries under a title that left little room for subtlety: "Afghan Predicament and the Trajectory to Peace: Domestic Collapse and Government Without Legitimacy." To its critics, the two-day conference is one more example of Pakistani meddling in Afghan affairs. To its defenders, it is a rare forum for Afghans shut out of Kabul. Both views contain some truth, and neither addresses the more important question: why do Afghans so often find themselves seeking solutions in foreign capitals?

The setting makes the question harder to ask. Since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, relations between Kabul and Islamabad have steadily worsened. Pakistan accuses the Taliban of allowing the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) to operate from Afghan territory. The Taliban deny it and accuse Pakistan of using military pressure to impose its will, including over the disputed Durand Line and the demand that TTP leaders be handed over. Pakistan has also carried out airstrikes inside Afghanistan, which Islamabad says targeted militants and Kabul says killed civilians.

So who is right? The answer is uncomfortable for both sides, and it begins with Pakistan.

Pakistan's security concerns over the TTP are real, and its officials argue that militants operating from Afghan soil threaten the wider region. At the conference, Pakistan's special representative for Afghanistan, Mohammad Sadiq, argued that Afghanistan needs a broad-based political arrangement and that its problems cannot be treated as a purely bilateral matter. But legitimate security concerns do not give Islamabad the right to shape Afghanistan's political future, and its record is far from innocent. Pakistan supported the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet war, later backed the Taliban movement, and sheltered its leaders during the two decades they fought the internationally backed Afghan government. By favoring some factions and undermining others, Pakistan helped entrench the very fragmentation that now serves as its entry point.

Those who dismiss the conference as a Pakistani project, however, should be equally uncomfortable, because many of its participants' complaints about the Taliban are hard to wave away. The Taliban took power by force and have built no inclusive political system. Women are excluded from much of public life, and groups outside the ruling structure have little meaningful role in governing. The February 2020 Doha agreement between the United States and the Taliban envisioned intra-Afghan negotiations and a political roadmap, and Western governments repeatedly said lasting peace required an inclusive settlement that respected the rights of all Afghans, including women and minorities. None of it was implemented. The hasty U.S. withdrawal and the Taliban's military takeover in August 2021 made the roadmap moot before it could be tested.

Which brings us to the deeper issue. Pakistan is not the root of Afghanistan's vulnerability; it is one of several powers that have exploited it.

Afghanistan's modern history has swung between authoritarian rule and political disorder, with stable institutions rarely taking root. Even the relatively peaceful reign of King Zahir Shah eventually collapsed from within, and what followed was a sequence of coups, communist rule, civil war, Taliban rule and foreign occupation. Through much of this period the state has leaned on outside money and arms, and has struggled to sustain itself when they disappeared.

Yet the most consequential weakness is the rivalry among Afghanistan's ethnic and regional groups. When a group concludes it has been shut out of power, it looks abroad. The mechanism is concrete: a marginalized faction, denied a seat at the table in Kabul, offers a neighboring state access, intelligence or armed manpower in exchange for backing. The foreign patron gains a proxy, the faction gains a sponsor, and the country loses.

History bears this out. Soviet-era factions relied on foreign sponsors. In the civil war of the 1990s, neighboring countries backed rival Afghan groups, with Pakistan supporting the Taliban and other regional powers supporting their opponents. After 2001, the internationally backed government depended heavily on Western military and financial assistance, and it collapsed within days of that support being withdrawn. Aid dependence was not the only cause, since corruption, a shrinking base of legitimacy and the demoralizing effect of the Doha deal all played a part, but a state that cannot stand on its own domestic support is always exposed.

The same logic applies today. Groups that feel excluded by the Taliban may turn to Pakistan or another foreign power, just as the Taliban once leaned on Pakistan while fighting the previous government. This history carries a caution: inclusion alone will not end foreign meddling, because outside powers act on their own interests, from the unresolved Durand Line to regional rivalries, and Pakistan will have stakes in Afghanistan under any government. But inclusion can shrink the demand for patrons, and it is the one part of the problem that Afghans themselves control. Fragmentation creates the opening, and foreign powers step through it.

That is why blaming Pakistan alone misses the point, and why the solution cannot come from Islamabad or any other foreign capital. The two countries have every reason to cooperate. They share a long border, millions of family and cultural ties, and large economic interests, and Central Asian states want a stable Afghanistan that can connect them to Pakistani ports and wider markets. Pakistani officials stressed this potential at the conference. But cooperation cannot rest on domination, just as the Taliban cannot solve Afghanistan's security problem by ruling through force from Kandahar.

The responsibility therefore returns to the Taliban. If their leadership accepts that Afghanistan belongs to all Afghans, not only to those who fought for it, and gives other ethnic and political groups a real place in government, it would remove much of the reason for opposition groups to seek foreign sponsors. A government with broader participation would also command more legitimacy with its neighbors and more resilience against outside pressure.

The obvious objection is that the Taliban have little reason to change. Their leadership is deeply suspicious of power-sharing, and many of its fighters spent twenty years believing they would one day rule alone. But the Taliban want things only others can give: diplomatic recognition, sanctions relief, access to frozen assets and the trade routes that could make Afghanistan an economic bridge. That is leverage, and it works only if used carefully. Foreign governments could tie recognition and development assistance to verifiable steps, such as appointing non-Taliban technocrats to key ministries, creating a consultative assembly that includes women and minority representatives, and allowing political parties to operate openly. Sanctions relief could be sequenced to match, so each concession is met with a concrete reward. The lesson of Doha is that promises made before benchmarks are met, and without any means of verification, do not hold. Incentives should follow performance rather than precede it.

None of this will be easy or quick. But the alternative is what Afghanistan has already experienced: isolation, economic collapse, and the steady advance of foreign powers eager to fill the void. Legitimacy matters on the opposition side too. Those who gather in foreign capitals to speak for Afghanistan's future will persuade Afghans at home only to the extent that they can show a genuine constituency there, rather than relying on a neighboring state's hospitality.

Force can win a war, but only consent can hold a country together. Afghans should not have to leave home and travel to Islamabad or any other capital to ask foreigners to solve their political problems. For that to change, Afghanistan's rulers must build a political system in which Afghans have a reason to stay and settle those problems themselves.