For decades, Pakistan pursued a policy of supporting the Afghan Taliban while cracking down on the Pakistani Taliban, the Tehreek-i-Taliban (TTP). With the Taliban in power in Afghanistan, Islamabad may have won its “long game”. But its game of chicken may be backfiring with jihadists coming home to roost.
On August 15, 2021, when the Taliban swept into Kabul and seized power in Afghanistan, there were exultations in neighbouring Pakistan. Afghans had “broken the shackles of slavery,” said Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan a day after the takeover, even as waves of desperate people scrambled to board departing flights at Kabul’s international airport in a bid to flee their “liberty”.
The Pakistani prime minister – dubbed “Taliban Khan” by his critics – is known for his anti-West tirades. But the gaffe-prone Khan’s position on the Taliban has always been in-synch with the geostrategic objectives of Pakistan’s military and vast intelligence network headed by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
Despite Islamabad’s repeated denials, a Taliban victory remained an ISI goal during the 20-year US mission in Afghanistan, making Pakistan a duplicitous ally in Washington’s “war on terror” as the country continued to provide the Islamist group safe havens until the departure of coalition forces.
In more circumspect Pakistani military-intelligence circles, the “double game” was the subject of jokes that sometimes leaked into the public domain.
In 2014, during the peak of the US war in Afghanistan, former ISI chief Hamid Gul appeared on the Pakistani talk show, “Joke Night”.
On live TV, Gul – who was Pakistan’s spy chief towards the end of the Cold War – made a celebrated forecast. “When history is written, it will be stated that the ISI defeated the Soviet Union in Afghanistan with the help of America,” he declared, embellishing Pakistan’s role in ending the 1980s Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
It was a prelude to a punchline that Gul proceeded to deliver with pizzaz. “Then there will be another sentence: The ISI, with the help of America, defeated America,” he concluded to guffaws from the audience.
America may be defeated in Afghanistan. But nearly six months after the Taliban takeover, the joke could well be on Pakistan – with cruel risks for its citizens.
Deadly attacks and a cross-border warning
On Sunday, five Pakistani soldiers were killed by firing from neighbouring Afghanistan in an attack claimed by Tehreek-i-Taliban (TTP), also called the Pakistani Taliban.
The Taliban are separate groups in both countries, but they share a common ideology and allegiances, which the TTP renewed following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Pakistan though follows a “good Taliban-bad Taliban” strategy that seeks a pliant, Islamist power across its western border in Afghanistan as a counterweight to its eastern neighbour and arch enemy, India. The ‘bad Taliban’ – the TTP, with its stated goal of overthrowing the Pakistani state and establishing Sharia law – is considered a terrorist threat.
The TTP attack in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province came just days after nine Pakistani soldiers were killed in the southwestern Balochistan province in coordinated attacks that Pakistani officials said involved “planners” from Afghanistan and India.
While Indian authorities routinely deny aiding Baloch separatists in Pakistan, the attacks sparked a first in Islamabad’s relations with the new Taliban regime across the western border.
In a statement released over the weekend, Islamabad condemned the use of Afghan soil for attacks against Pakistan, warning that it “expects that the interim Afghan government will not allow conduct of such activities against Pakistan in future.”
Some experts were quick to note that the Pakistani accusation marked the first time since the Taliban takeover that a country publicly declared Afghan territory was being used for cross-border international terrorism. The irony that Pakistan was the first country to complain was not lost on Afghans who have long accused Islamabad of supporting the Taliban and other jihadist groups.
The Pakistani accusation of Afghan soil being used for cross-border terrorism came days after a UN terrorism monitoring report said the Taliban had failed to take “steps to limit the activities of foreign terrorist fighters in the country”. The report, by the UN Security Council’s monitoring team for al Qaeda, the Islamic State (IS) group and their affiliates, noted that, “On the contrary, terrorist groups enjoy greater freedom there [Afghanistan] than at any time in recent history.”
The Taliban however said the findings were “untrue”. In a Twitter post, the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” – as the group refers to its government, which has not been recognised by the international community – “strongly” rejected the report. “Afghanistan is witnessing exemplary security since the Islamic Emirate regained full sovereignty over the country,” the statement noted.
‘Cut from the same ideological cloth’
“Exemplary security” is a contested claim for many Afghans – including abducted women rights activists who have been missing for weeks, and members of the Shiite Hazara minority, who have been targeted in deadly attacks attributed to the Islamic State group’s local Khorasan branch, the IS-K.
Meanwhile in Pakistan, increasing attacks over the past few weeks have raised questions over the army’s “long game” policy of supporting the Afghan Taliban despite threats of a jihadist spillover.
“For quite a few years, Pakistan had been demanding that the government in Afghanistan curb the threat of anti-Pakistan groups on Afghan soil. The hope was, with a new friendly government in Afghanistan, Pakistan would get more help than in the past,” said Michael Kugelman from the Washington DC-based Wilson Center in an interview with FRANCE 24. Instead, “there are signs of intensified security risks. We’re seeing a resurgence of the Pakistani Taliban, as well as Baloch separatist groups intensifying attacks,” he noted.
“What this means is that the [Afghan] Taliban is not a seamless entity,” said Ayesha Siddiqa, from the Department of War Studies, King's College London, in an interview with FRANCE 24. “Pakistan can continue supporting the Taliban, but they have little control in discouraging or convincing the Taliban to clamp down on the TTP.”
It’s a matter of “will and capacity”, according to Kugelman. “There’s an argument to be made that the Taliban ran a successful insurgency for many years, and it theoretically has the capacity to tackle the TTP. But I think the broader issue is one of will. The Taliban is not willing to use coercive tactics against the TTP because they have a close relationship with the group. At the end of the day, especially with Islamist militant groups, they are all cut from the same ideological cloth,” he explained.
Getting by with drone strikes from a frenemy
After two decades of pursuing a “good Taliban-bad Taliban” policy, Islamabad is now confronted with the disquieting scenario of their Afghan proteges pursuing a “good Pakistan-bad Pakistan” strategy, noted Pakistani journalist and writer Kunwar Khuldune Shahid in the foreign policy website, The Diplomat.
“Good” Pakistan “helped Taliban leaders dodge the US-led forces, while diverting some of the resources taken from the West toward the Taliban,” wrote Shahid. “Bad” Pakistan now says the Taliban have an “obligation to reciprocate”.
The Afghan Taliban signaled its independence from its backers just moments after taking charge of Kabul on August 15, when it released thousands of TTP prisoners, including the group’s former deputy chief Faqir Mohammad. The move was promptly reciprocated when the TTP hailed the Afghan Taliban takeover and pledged allegiance to Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada.
Since it shot into the jihadist spotlight more than a decade ago, the TTP has been blamed for hundreds of attacks in Pakistan, including the 2014 massacre of nearly 150 children at an army school in the northwestern city of Peshawar. Despite its brutal record, Islamabad has been unable to persuade the Afghan Taliban to crack down on their Pakistani cohorts.
Instead, the Afghan Taliban offered to facilitate talks between the TTP and the Pakistani government. It was an overture that was taken up by Islamabad, resulting in the two parties agreeing to a monthlong ceasefire in November. But the truce expired on December 9 after the peace talks broke down.
On the military front, Pakistan could launch cross-border raids on TTP positions in Afghanistan, but that would raise tensions with the new sovereign power in Afghanistan in a sensitive zone split by a colonial-era border that has divided Pashtun tribes on either side.
Before the Taliban takeover, Pakistan was aided in its anti-TTP fight with US intelligence and drone strikes, which resulted in the killings of the group’s top leaders, including Hakimullah Mehsud in 2012 and his successor, Maulana Fazlullah in 2018. “It’s ironic since Pakistan often complained that the US never addressed Pakistan’s terrorism concerns,” said Kugelman.
But Pakistan today is not likely to get by with a little help from its US frenemy. “The TTP is not going to be a priority for the US. Pakistan can’t count on the US to provide counterterror assistance since the US is now focused on al Qaeda and Islamic State and threats to US interests,” he added.
Minerals and militants in Balochistan
Meanwhile an alarming new front is opening up west of the TTP’s tribal heartland, in Pakistan’s arid, mineral-rich Balochistan province bordering Afghanistan and Iran.
Separatists have waged a low-level insurgency in the southwestern province for years, fuelled by anger over a political and economic marginalisation that traps Balochistan in “Pakistan’s poorest province” status despite its abundant natural resources.
In recent weeks though, the attacks have turned increasingly sophisticated and alarming. On Saturday, the Pakistani military finally managed to put an end to four days of assaults by separatists that began with twin attacks on army posts last week. The separatist Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) claimed the latest attack, which killed nine Pakistani soldiers, according to official figures.
It followed a spate of attacks last month following warnings by Baloch separatists that Chinese investments are not safe in Pakistan.
China is a critical ally for Pakistan, which is home to Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) showcase, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project linking China's western Xinjiang region with the strategic port of Gwadar in Balochistan.
In Kabul, the Taliban also views China as a “friend of Afghanistan” and is likely to address, as best it can, Beijing’s requests to expel Uighur militants on Afghan soil. It’s an easier ask than Islamabad’s call for a crackdown on their Pashtun brethren in the TTP.
China has so far resisted playing a military support role in the Af-Pak region. But if Pakistan’s claims of an Indian involvement in the Balochistan attacks are true, Beijing may feel compelled to push back against its geostrategic rival, drawing a third nuclear-armed country into an already combustible zone.
While allegations, counter allegations and denials between India and Pakistan are a familiar feature, Kugelman notes that the audacity and sophistication of the latest attacks in Balochistan have added an alarming new ingredient in the regional security stew.
“Understandably, there are speculations about external involvement. What happened in Balochistan was unprecedented. The attacks on two Pakistani army frontier camps had a level of sophistication and close coordination that suggests external involvement,” said Kugelman. “The problem though is that Pakistan so often focuses on questions of external hands, that it seemingly doesn’t focus enough on the fact that these attacks are happening in Pakistan, with all the local facilitation and involvement that this entails.”
With the authorities locked in an external blame game and with the army deprived of US intelligence and military cooperation, Pakistan’s “long game” strategy of having a weak, Islamist power in Kabul is likely to implode with forbidding consequences for regional security.
“Pakistan is playing with fire,” said Kugelman. “Now the full range of anti-Pakistan groups is going after it, and the broader picture suggests security risks for South Asia and Central Asia alike.”
But Siddiqa believes risks are par for the Pakistani course. “There’s an element of backfire built into Pakistan’s game, it comes with the territory,” she said. “Pakistan can say these are non-state actors, they are not under our control. Heartbreaking as it is for soldiers to die, it is to the advantage of the Pakistani establishment. The military establishment does not feel there is a contradiction in what they’re doing, the killings – including of school children – are just collateral damage,” Siddiqa noted, referring to former ISI chief Asad Durrani’s controversial comment, during a news show, that the victims of the 2014 Peshawar school attack were “collateral damage” in the agency’s security strategy.
The strategy though has overlooked the interests of more than 220 million Pakistani citizens, especially the 24 percent living below the poverty line, limiting the ability of civilian governments to address economic development.
“As attacks mount inside Pakistan, the political risks of inaction grow higher for the Pakistani government. Attacks now are seemingly happening every day and it will become a political issue for the government,” warned Kugelman. For a prime minister convinced that a power takeover by a hardline Islamist group – with little expertise, and no plan to include women in public life – represents a breaking of shackles, that would be something to take into consideration.
