The thaw in Pak-Afghan ties and challenges of cross-border militancy

Following the informal meeting back in May between the foreign ministers of China, Pakistan and Afghanistan, Islamabad announced it was enhancing diplomatic ties with Kabul. Pakistan formally upgraded its diplomatic representation in Afghanistan from charge d’affaires to the ambassador level on May 31. 

The combined efforts of Pakistan’s Special Representative for Afghanistan Muhammad Sadiq and China’s mediation as well as India’s outreach to the Taliban against the backdrop of the May 7-10 India-Pakistan conflict provided the impetus for improvement in Afghanistan-Pakistan relations. China is the lynchpin holding these ties together as the two countries work out formal institutional mechanisms to resolve their disputes through negotiations. The future trajectory of bilateral relations will depend on the progress in formal talks and steps the Taliban will take to curb cross-border militant violence. For the foreseeable future, it seems neither will cross-border attacks disrupt the thaw in Kabul-Islamabad ties, nor will security dominate diplomatic engagements between the two sides. 

Instead of trying to resolve security problems to create room for broad-based diplomatic engagements with the Taliban regime, Pakistan (on China’s advice), has decided to adopt a more inclusive and holistic approach. The rationale behind the new Pakistani approach toward Afghanistan is that cooperation in other fields, such as the Uzbekistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan railway project, the proposed expansion of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor to Afghanistan and facilitating visa process for cross-border trade, will remove the trust deficit to pragmatically address security challenges. Mutually beneficial economic and regional connectivity projects, could breathe new life into Afghanistan’s stagnant economy. At the same time, cooperation in other fields should not be hijacked by security concerns. In other words, bilateral and multilateral economic, diplomatic and political interactions should continue despite security challenges. The rationale behind the new Pakistani approach toward Afghanistan is that cooperation in other fields will remove the trust deficit to pragmatically address security challenges.

The rationale behind the new Pakistani approach toward Afghanistan is that cooperation in other fields will remove the trust deficit to pragmatically address security challenges.

- Abdul Basit Khan

Since the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, Pakistan has approached ties with the Taliban in three distinct ways. 

First, Pakistan engaged in talks with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) with the Afghan Taliban’s help and concluded two short-lived peace deals in 2021 and 2022 to explore a politically negotiated settlement. However, militant violence increased in Pakistan due to the resettlement of militants in different areas of the Newly Merged Districts (NMD) under a secret understanding. Once the peace deals collapsed due to irreconcilable positions of the Pakistani state and TTP, the repatriated militants picked up arms despite promises of living peacefully like normal citizens, recreated militant networks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. 

Second, after the failure of peace talks, Pakistan gave the Taliban’s proposal of relocating TTP militants from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border areas to overcome cross-border attacks a chance. The proposal included building residential compounds in Ghazni province with the UAE’s financial assistance and gradually move TTP militants away from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. This did not achieve its desired results. The Taliban did not push TTP beyond a certain point, fearing the migration of disgruntled parties towardz Daesh-Khorasan. 

Afterwards, Pakistan took a tough line against the Afghan Taliban and asked them to take action against TTP. Afghanistan-Pakistan ties nosedived as a result of this hard-line approach. During this period, Pakistan also decided to forcefully repatriate Afghan refugees to Afghanistan to build pressure on the Taliban regime. Likewise, on a couple of occasions, Pakistan also targeted TTP’s positions inside Afghanistan, pushing the diplomatic relationship to a breaking point. In retaliation, the Taliban fired mortars on Pakistani positions and closed the border. In this phase, border skirmishes and closures owing to disagreements over the construction of security posts and cross-border militant movements became common place. The period was marked by mutual recriminations where Pakistan accused the Taliban of harboring and aiding TTP, while the latter blamed the former for externalizing its internal security challenges and violating Afghan sovereignty. 

Critically, the recent thaw in Afghanistan-Pakistan ties also saw a brief lull in militant violence in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Following Pakistan’s announcement it was upgrading relations with Afghanistan, the Taliban issued a religious ruling, as a confidence building measure, barring Afghan nationals from participating in a fight outside Afghanistan. However, the last two weeks have witnessed a sharp spike in militant violence. For instance, on June 28, the Hafiz Gul Bahadur Group targeted a convoy of the Pakistan Army in North Waziristan with a car suicide bomb, killing 13 soldiers. Alarmingly, militant groups are using explosive-laden quadcopters in North Waziristan to target police stations. In another high-profile attack in Bajaur tribal district, an assistant commissioner was killed with four others when his vehicle was hit with an improvised explosive device. Both TTP and Daesh Khorasan claimed this attack. However, Daesh-K has a strong footprint in Bajaur and it seems more plausible that it carried out the attack. Nonetheless, the sudden increase in high-profile militant attacks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa coupled with the targeted killings of police personnel in the province could be a signal from Afghanistan-based Pakistani militant groups both to the Taliban and the Pakistani state that they will not stop their militant campaigns. 

Despite these attacks, Pakistan hosted the first round of additional-secretary level talks in Islamabad on July 7 to discuss trade, visa, security, connectivity and refugee issues. The decision to hold talks at the additional-secretary level was taken during Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar’s visit to Kabul in April. 

Ostensibly, the new wave of militant attacks has not hijacked the thaw in Afghanistan-Pakistan ties. However, it remains to be seen what steps the Afghan Taliban will take to address Pakistan’s security concerns. At the same time, Pakistan’s threshold of tolerating the recent spike in violence will also determine the trajectory of the Afghanistan-Pakistan rapprochement. 

Ambassador Muhammad Sadiq is scheduled to fly to Kabul later this week to convey Pakistan’s concerns to Taliban authorities. The Afghanistan-Pakistan diplomatic engagement may not halt due to future terror attacks. However, these interactions are unlikely to bring any substantive improvement in bilateral ties. As a result, the one step forward, two steps backward pattern of the Afghanistan-Pakistan relations will persist.

The author is a Senior Associate Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore. X :@ basitresearcher.