Touqir Hussain
Zalmay Khalilzad, former U.S. envoy to Afghanistan, famously said that the Afghanistan-Pakistan relationship is “the mother of all relations.” He may have been right. Otherwise how do you explain that Pakistan and the Taliban, whom Islamabad had nurtured for decades at the cost of much reputational damage, are now engaged in a deadly armed conflict?
After taking control of Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban, Islamabad’s former proxies, were expected to provide Pakistan with so-called “strategic depth” against India. Instead they have come to be diplomatically closer to India than to Pakistan. And now Pakistan’s defense minister has been warning about an open war to obliterate the Taliban – threatening to change the very regime Pakistan helped to come to power in Afghanistan.
At the center of the dispute is the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and its sinister campaign of terrorism inside Pakistan. TTP attacks continues to cause heavy fatalities, specially among security forces. By all accounts, these attacks are being directed by TTP leaders and commanders based in Afghanistan. This has motivated Pakistan to conduct several rounds of strikes on Afghan soil, with the Taliban responding with military actions along the border.
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