Giorgio Cafiero
Gunfire and airstrikes now define the Afghan-Pakistan frontier. Over the past year, violence along the border has surged as relations between Kabul and Islamabad have plunged to their most dangerous point since the Afghan Taliban’s return to power in August 2021. Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Islamist rulers of allowing militant groups—most notably the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban, and the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA)—to operate from Afghan soil, launching deadly attacks across the border. Islamabad has answered with an increasingly aggressive military response, and with 2026 approaching, the prospect of a negotiated settlement appears remote as momentum builds toward broader Pakistani operations inside Afghanistan.
This deterioration is striking, given Islamabad’s long history of support for the Taliban. Pakistan was one of only three countries to recognize the Islamic Emirate in the 1990s, and its main intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was the Afghan Taliban’s chief sponsor throughout the 2001–21 US-led occupation of Afghanistan. Yet the Taliban’s return to power almost four-and-a-half years ago has brought not strategic depth but strategic strain. Cross-border attacks attributed to the TTP and BLA have intensified, and Pakistan now openly accuses the Afghan Taliban of tolerating, if not enabling, the militants threatening its internal security.
No comments:
Post a Comment