Pakistan-Afghanistan conflict: Friends turned foe

Dr Sudhir Kumar Das

(dasudhirk@gmail.com)

In a sudden move on October 9th, Pakistan attacked several locations near and around Kabul and Paktika, claiming them to be terrorist dens of Fitna al Khwarij (FAK) and Fitna al Hindustan (FAH), terms used by the Pakistani establishment for Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Pakistan claimed to have targeted with precision airstrikes and physical raids on the terror hubs inside Afghanistan, reportedly to neutralize its leader, Noor Wali Mehsud. The Pakistani side claims that they have repeatedly urged Afghanistan’s Taliban administration to rein in the members of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan who have been running amok inside Pakistan by frequently targeting its security forces in the border region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, necessitating this airstrike. In retaliation, Afghanistan forces attacked many border posts of the Pakistan army. Pakistan claimed to have killed over two hundred Taliban fighters, and, in a counterclaim, Afghanistan asserted that it has killed fifty-eight Pakistani soldiers. The conflict escalated to a level where Saudi Arabia, which has signed a defence pact with Pakistan recently, and Qatar intervened, urging both the warring nations to show restraint. Pakistan has closed the border points of Torkham and Chaman, lifelines through which essential supplies reached landlocked Afghanistan. 

Contrast the present tense relation between Pakistan and Afghanistan with a widely circulated picture of a smiling Faiz Hameed, the then ISI chief, sipping tea on the portico of Sarena Hotel, Kabul, in August 2021 soon after the Taliban took over Afghanistan after the American forces hurriedly withdrew. The picture of a confident Faiz Hameed sipping tea is in fact a manifestation of the premature triumphalism of the Pakistani military, euphemistically termed as the ‘establishment’ in media parlance. The picture is also a manifestation of how oblivious the Pakistani establishment is to the ephemeral nature of the geopolitics of the region. The sense of triumphalism was so intense in Pakistan at that time that one of the leaders of the then ruling dispensation, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Neelam Irshad Sheikh, had declared on live TV in September 2021 that the Taliban would help Pakistan in wresting Kashmir from India militarily. The sense of triumphalism was so overwhelming that even then Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan made a statement that the victory of the Taliban over America is like the Afghans having broken the shackles of years of slavery. However, the sense of triumphalism at the Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan in 2021 soon turned into desperation in the ranks of the Pakistani establishment, as, to their chagrin, the Taliban remained stubbornly independent in developing relations with other countries of the region, including India, ignoring their diktats. An Afghanistan administration that remains autonomous and takes its own decisions with regard to its foreign policy is unacceptable to the Pakistani establishment. Historically, since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the mujahideen, the earlier avatar of the Taliban, was created to serve a strategic purpose of Pakistan: that it would provide strategic depth in case of a conflict with India. 

One of the most important reasons for this rapidly deteriorating relation between the Taliban administration and the Pakistani establishment is an attitudinal one. The timing of the airstrike on Kabul by Pakistan is significant. It happened on a day when the acting Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi was in India on a friendship trip. In a way the airstrikes are a warning to Afghanistan that you cannot be friends with India. The Pakistan establishment always considered the Taliban as a client organisation ready to do its bidding. In 1996, when the Taliban 1.0 came to power after defeating the Soviet-backed Najibullah government, it served the Pakistani interest to the hilt. However, the present Taliban, in its present avatar, is a much more mature one. After the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban no longer believed in a client-master relationship with the Pakistani establishment. It now wants to gain legitimacy by cultivating relationships with other major powers in the region, like China, Russia, and India, Pakistan’s long-standing rival. They now refuse to be a subservient partner to Pakistan, serving their geopolitical interest. This autonomous and assertive nature of Taliban 2.0 slowly relegated Pakistan to the background in Afghanistan’s foreign policy spectrum. The other reason for the Taliban administration’s growing rift with the Pakistani establishment is set in a historical issue, that is, the Durand Line, which demarcates the 2600-km-long border of these two Islamic nations, drawn by the British in 1893. Afghanistan has never acknowledged the Durand Line as the legitimate border demarcation, as it cuts across the Pashtun-inhabited area into two separate countries, forcing the ethnic Pashtuns to be divided into two different nations. This has remained a simmering border dispute between the two nations. 

One of the most persistent allegations of Pakistan is that the Afghan-Taliban administration has been supporting the TTP, who are based there and carry out terrorist activities inside Pakistan. Although Afghanistan has strongly denied any such involvement in the terrorist activities, the fact cannot be overlooked that TTP has been connected through an umbilical cord to the Afghan Taliban from the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. This umbilical cord connection with the passage of time and fluid geopolitical scenario forced the two entities to develop into inseparable twins. In the subsequent phase of the war on terror by the US in 2001, they fought against both their erstwhile mentor Pakistan under General Parvez Musharraf and the US forces as well. During the two decades of struggle, TTP has been the only steadfast companion of the Afghan Taliban, providing them shelter in Pakistan in those hard struggling days. When the geopolitical scenario changed in 1989 after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the US war on terror in 2001, Pakistan exercised its geopolitical choice and became an American ally (albeit deceitfully) and fought against the very same forces it had created in the name of the war on terror. This deceitful duplicity of the Pakistani establishment was not lost on both factions of the Taliban based in Pakistan and Afghanistan. To expect that the Afghan Taliban will completely disown TTP now at the insistence of Pakistanis is like hoping for Mount Everest to sink in the Indian Ocean. The Afghan Taliban still insists that the TTP and its activities are an internal problem of Pakistan.

In the governing structure of Pakistan, the establishment exercises complete control over foreign relations and, more particularly, the relationship with neighbours like India and Afghanistan. The civilian leadership has very little say in it. The establishment always believed in applying force to solve every problem, be it internal or external. The 1965 war with India to wrest Kashmir militarily and the Kargil incursions in 1999 are two of the most illustrative examples of the way of thinking of the Pakistani army. They have been doing what they are best at – applying force to solve a political problem. Hence, the problem of insurgency in Baluchistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa remains as acute as ever. The present conflict with the western neighbour Afghanistan is a manifestation of the same mindset of the Pakistani army—force over diplomacy. 

The Pakistan government’s recent order to evict and deport all legal and illegal Afghan immigrants living in Pakistan back to their country has created a sense of hatred for Pakistan among the common Afghan public. Anti-Pakistan sentiment has been running high in Afghanistan because of the mass deportation of Afghans. Another reason for growing bad blood between the two countries is the unilateral and frequent closure of the border points of Torkham and Chaman by Pakistan. These two border points are the lifeline of supplies for the landlocked people of Afghanistan. Any closure of these two border points causes a lot of misery to the ordinary people of Afghanistan, creating further hatred for Pakistan. The present condition remains very fluid and tense. Many countries have urged both the nations to show restraint. But as the temperature runs high, a further escalation cannot be ruled out.