PAKISTAN’S FOREIGN POLICY TOWARDS AFGHANISTAN: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS

INTRODUCTION

PAKISTAN’S FOREIGN POLICY towards Afghanistan during the last seventy nine years has been through various changes due to the international conditions, changing positions of power and changing calculations of strategies. Since the beginning of the fight over the Durand Line, the Cold War, proxy wars in the Soviet-Afghan war, and Taliban regime support, post-9/11 realignment, the emergence of domestic terrorism, pragmatic engagement, and even direct military confrontation, the Afghanistan policy of Pakistan has been both consistent in its strategic objectives and quite adaptive in its approach. Nonetheless, by looking at this history, one can conclude that structural bottlenecks still affect the effectiveness of the foreign policy in Afghanistan and the scope of the possibility to establish mutually beneficial cooperation in Pakistan. The open war on February 2026 is the logical result of these contradictions, which reveals the primary ineffectiveness of the strategy of the Pakistan.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The foreign policy of Pakistan towards Afghanistan has been one of the most convoluted relationships as far as South Asian geopolitical relationships are concerned. The two states have a history of deep-rooted relations with each other, sharing ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and having unresolved strategic tussles that have formed the regional as well as international dynamics in substantial ways. In order to know the Pakistani strategy in Afghanistan, it is necessary to consider the state of affairs in the pre-colonial period, the first years of the post-independence conflict and the further alterations in the policy, which has characterized this relation throughout seven decades.

The present day Pakistan and Afghanistan had a historical relationship before the colonial period in the form of empires, sultanates, and tribal confederations. The Durrani Empire (1747-1826) was established by Ahmad Shah Abdali (Durrani), and stretched to areas that comprised modern-day Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. Following the division of British India in 1947, Pakistan was left with a new defined boundary with Afghanistan and this became the Durand Line that was defined in 1893 as creating a boundary between British India and Afghanistan. It was this border which, however, was not constructed through any substantial consultation with the peoples it separated, that was the main source of tension. The border divided Pashtun and Baloch people, establishing what the Pakistanis call the Frontier and the Afghans call their eastern frontier, which immediately has put them in a situation of conflict and unsteadiness. Later Pakistani governments adopted policies that ranged between armed struggle to strategic alliances, mostly under Cold War affiliations, rivalry of dominance in the region, and the desire to be able to achieve strategic depth against India. These policies have passed through a series of stages, namely, the period of initial tensions and conflict, the period of the Soviet invasion, the Taliban period, and the period of the American intervention after 2001, and each of them has had its own strategic goals and its own successes or failures.

INCEPTION OF PAKISTAN AND DURAND LINE CONFLICT (1947-1960s)

An early foreign policy towards Afghanistan in Pakistan was largely influenced by a query of the Durand line which is a 2,640-kilometer boundary, created in 1893 between British India and Afghanistan. This was a border that Pakistan inherited when they got their independence in 1947 and Afghanistan immediately denied it. It was negotiated between the British colonialists and the Amir of Afghanistan and not between the Afghan people. This conflict was the source of the establishment of the base tension between Pakistan and Afghanistan. With Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan (1947-1951), Pakistan wanted to enact its borders and position itself as an Islamic state, but Afghanistan irredentism in Pashtun lands in Pakistan suddenly became a reality. The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) Strategic Survey (1959-1960) noted that Pakistan and Afghanistan engaged in several border fights and economic disputes, with Pakistan attempting to use its control over the Helmand River water resources as a diplomatic instrument while Afghanistan pursued nationalist policies in its eastern provinces. Afghanistan denied the Durand Line and engaged in active promotion of Pashtun nationalism which resulted in economic crisis and military rivalry.

The initial foreign policy dealt with Afghanistan by Pakistan was defensive and reactive in nature. A firm policy toward border security was enforced by Pakistan due to the open rejection of the Durand Line by Afghanistan and his encouragement of Pashtun separatism. The course of the relationship at this time could be described as diplomatic protests, economic sanctions (Pakistan shut estrades), and military mobilizations. The policy of Pakistan was aimed at uniting the borders of the country so that Afghanistan would have no opportunity to play on the inner conflicts between Pakistani Pashtuns and have a buffer on the potential threat. This confrontational strategy, however, set a precedent of every further event in Afghanistan being perceived in terms of its effect on the Pashtun population in Pakistan and border security. The mistrust that was established in the process formed the course of the decades of competition.

The initial era showed that the Pakistani attitude towards Afghanistan was, in fact, territorially oriented and concerned the state security situation, and it left the precedents of the state-centered security strategies that would be upheld in further decades.

THE ERA OF COLD WAR AND STRATEGIC ALLIANCE (1960-1979)

The 60s and 70s were the period when the foreign policy of Pakistan towards Afghanistan changed due to the Cold War and ideological conflict. Both Pakistan and Afghanistan tried to adopt the non-aligned position in this period, not equally successful. The policy of non-alignment and the growing closer relationship with the Soviet Union were pursued by Afghanistan under the leadership of King Zahir Shah (1933-1973) at the cost of accepting Soviet economic and military assistance. Although still led by General Ayub Khan and then Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan remained concentrated over the issue of Pashtunistan as well as growing into closer strategic relations with the United States, Saudi Arabia and Iran. It was also marked by the growing Soviet influence in Afghanistan which Pakistan considered with much apprehension since it feared to be surrounded by the Soviet-supported countries (Soviet Union to the north, Afghanistan to the west). This fear of geopolitics became the essential factor in the strategic decisions of Pakistan.

Pakistan managed to change its foreign policy into a more offensive one, or rather end defensive one based on Durand Line dispute to a more active policy in accordance with the Western interests. Pakistan knew that a rise in the Soviet orientation of Afghanistan, on top of Soviet military encirclement, demanded a new strategy. Towards the end of 1970s, the military apparatus of Pakistan, especially under General Zia, had evolved advanced intelligence attacks and were planning on the possibility of Soviet intervention. This was the commencement of the concept of strategic depth by Pakistan in which they wanted to keep a hand on Afghanistan to keep the wrong element at bay in terms of taking over the territories bordering Pakistan. The strategy of Pakistan in this period also had a more general ideologically oriented change toward the Islamization as Pakistan tried to balance the Soviet communism by using the Islamic rhetoric and mobilization. Relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan was then further reduced to Cold war logic with Pakistan strategy being dictated much by its correlation with the United States and Saudi Arabia.

It was a time that solidified the presence of Pakistan as an active player in the Cold War Afghanistan, shifting away through territorial conflicts into great power rivalry, and preconditioned the central role of Pakistan during the Soviet invasion.

THE JIHAD ERA AND THE SOVIET INVASION (1979-1989)

In the case of Afghanistan, the strategic position and foreign policy of Pakistan towards Afghanistan were significantly changed after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. Instead of considering this as a direct threat to Pakistan, the government of General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in collaboration with the United States and Saudi Arabia viewed the invasion as an unprecedented strategic opportunity. Pakistan turned out to be the logistical, organizational and training grounds of the Afghan mujahideen resistance against Soviet occupation. Pakistan used its main intelligence group, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to organize the flow of billions of dollars of American and Saudi military and financial aid to Afghan Mujahideen factions. . Brigadier Mohammad Younis Khan, in his work “Pakistan and the Great Power” (2010), documents that “Pakistan’s ISI received approximately $3.2 billion in American military aid between 1979-1989, with Pakistan then distributing weapons and resources to seven major Mujahideen parties, with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Ahmed Shah Massoud receiving the largest shares. Khan specifically notes that Pakistan’s strategy favored Pashtun-dominated groups, reflecting its desire for post-Soviet influence”.

During this time, the Pakistani territory was militarized, the weapon inflow started, the refugee settlements with millions of Afghan citizens were established, the radicalization of the Pakistani society was carried out through the active encouragement of the Islamic ideology and the popularization of the Jihad image. The Chief Military Administrator of Pakistan General Zia took the Afghan war to firmly establish his regime at the expense of the secular and democratic forces in Pakistan.

The foreign policy of Pakistan in Afghanistan in the 1980s was a conscious, planned and wholesale participation in proxy wars. Pakistan did not simply enable the opposition but it did it in accordance with its preference and ideological leanings. The evidence demonstrate that Pakistan had three parallel goals, which were: first, to expel the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan; second, to prepare Pakistan and its favorite groups in future Afghanistan to have post-Soviet influence; third, to use the Afghan crisis to Islamicize the Pakistani society and solidify its domestic political power. The inflow of arms, the radicalization of the border belt and the development of the Islamic militant groups at this time brought about ramifications that would haunt Pakistan decades later. Significantly, the Afghan factional conflicts became the interest of Pakistan due to its policy of backing various Mujahideen groups and favoring some of them (such as that of Hezb-i-Islami led by Hekmatyar); it was not just about ousting an alien invader. This is the time when the strategic agency of Pakistan in Afghanistan was in its prime, yet the seeds of conflicts in the future were planted at this time.

The era of the Soviet invasion changed a reserved neighboring state, Pakistan, into an active force in proxy warfare whose strategic implications have far-reaching effects that cannot even be traced to the end of the Cold War.

THE RISE OF TALIBAN AND POST SOVIET TURMOIL (1989-1996)

After the Soviets left the country in 1989 and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, which was communist, collapsed in 1992, the country fell into the civil war. The different groups of Mujahideen, who had been united mainly by the common opposition to the Soviets, now switched their guns against one another in a disastrous war that displaced millions of people as well as destabilized the whole region. After ten years of aid to the Afghans to fight the sovies, Pakistan was confronting a badly divided Afghanistan, where its favored groups (especially the Hezb-i-Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar) was losing power to other groups, especially the Northern Alliance under Ahmed Shah Massoud, which Pakistan thought had got too close to Iran and were thus unsupportive to Pakistani interests. Having realized the risk and an opportunity, the ISI and military set-up of Pakistan started to promote a new Islamic movement that rose in southern Afghanistan: the Taliban. The Taliban, which is mostly made up of the Pashtun Islamic students under the leadership of Mullah Mohammad Omar provided to Pakistan that which their predecessors failed to provide them with, a unified rule of the territory of Afghanistan and a government dominated by the ethnic Pashtun, which would be responsive to the interests of Pakistan.

The shift of Pakistan as a country that favored different groups of Mujahideen to Taliban was a strategic move and not a chance finding. Pakistan felt that they had discovered in the Taliban the ideal tool to fulfil their strategic goals an integrated government of Afghanistan that would allow Pakistan influence, a government that would not act as a safe haven to anti-Pakistan militant groups and government that would offer Pakistan strategic depth against India.

The Taliban ideology which was a puritan Pashtun version of Islam was also appealing to the Pakistani own Islamization project under General Zia. The evidence also, however, confirms that the Taliban support that Pakistan has given has had some major repercussions, although it had been contributing to the Taliban gaining power. Ahmed Rashid’s influential work ‘Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia’ (2000) reveals that Pakistan’s military and intelligence services, particularly under ISI director General Naseerullah Babar, actively recruited Pakistani volunteers and military advisors to support the Taliban, with Pakistani military officers serving as trainers and tacticians during the Taliban’s military campaigns. The huge supply of arms, experience, and Pakistani manpower strengthened the militant orientation of the Taliban and their dedication to Islamic rule to such an extent that would soon become problematic to Pakistan itself. Moreover, Pakistan was seen as creating resentment among its opponents (mainly Iran and India) by making a decisive support to the Taliban that further led other groups in Afghanistan to oppose or support the Northern Alliance.

The adoption of Taliban by Pakistan both symbolized the highest point of its strategic agency as well as the inception of a chain reaction that would hurt its internal security since it would willingly be involved in a regime that would host anti-Pakistan militant groups.

PAKISTAN’S STRATEGIC GAINS & THE TALIBAN ERA (1996-2001)

When the Taliban took control of Kabul in September 1996 and when they consolidated their hold over the control of about 90 percent of Afghanistan by 2001, Pakistan had attained some of its old strategic goals. The government that was in the nation was pro-Pakistan and it marked the first time since partition that Afghanistan was under a government that met the interest of Pakistan. The Taliban being a Pashtun movement dominated by Pashtun clergy was an indication of Pakistan ethnic and ideological inclination. Pakistan was turned into the Taliban main patron in the world, giving military hardware, gasoline, food, and cash subsidies. The ISI in Pakistan tightened its ties with the Taliban intelligence formations, and Pakistani volunteers and military advisors were present all over the Taliban military, security and civilian government. To Pakistan, the Taliban government offered strategic depth to Pakistan because Afghanistan would never turn into a haven of anti-Pakistan operations and the government was Pashtun dominated and was therefore in Pakistan interest. Pakistan gained diplomatic status of the Taliban (out of only three countries: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates), which gave the Taliban legitimacy internationally in South Asia.

Pakistan enjoyed unprecedented influence over Afghanistan under the Taliban regime. The Taliban, unlike the various Mujahideen groupings of the 1980s, which Pakistan had to balance and organize amongst the competing interests, gave Pakistan one, but obedient central government. The concept of strategic depth of Pakistan was put to test: Afghanistan under the Taliban would not host anti-pakistan militant groups, would also offer Pakistan intelligence on the possible threats posed by the northwest, and would also keep the Indian pressure in central Asia at minimum. Nevertheless, it also demonstrate a major strategic blind spot in the calculations of the strategy of Pakistan. At the time when Pakistan had been concentrating on the advantages of Taliban regimes, the consequences of hosting and supporting one of the first purely Islamist state formations in the world were not sufficiently appreciated in Pakistan. The strict Islamic law that was brought by the Taliban, the fact that they destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas, the fact that they oppressed women, and above all the fact that they harbored international jihad networks (including Al-Qaeda under Osama bin Laden) placed a liability on them that would later prove catastrophic to Pakistan. The intelligence agencies in Pakistan knew that Al-Qaeda was present in the country, and assumed that they could handle the relationship and this was a miscalculation of the highest degree.

The Taliban regime was a manifestation of the strategic depth idea of Pakistan, yet at the same time put Pakistan in a kind of relationship with a regime that was becoming increasingly linked with global terrorism and jihadi movements and this brought weaknesses that were devastatingly revealed following 9/11.

THE POST 9/11 CRISIS: STRATEGIC SETBACK (2001-2008)

Pakistan’s Difficult Transition from Taliban Ally to American Partner. The terrorist attacks of the 11th of September 2001 and the subsequent American action of overthrowing the Taliban regime militarily essentially shook the strategic position of Pakistan in Afghanistan. It was General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan who had taken over power in the country in October 1999 who was in an unprecedented strategic crisis. The US insisted that Pakistan should leave the Taliban campaign to oppose the American governments. Pakistan had to decide between the Taliban who were its allies and the American super power who gave massive military and economic support to Pakistan. In the estimation that American power was too much to fight and that their strategic interests were to retain the American support, General Musharraf made the fatal choice to overturn the policy of Pakistan. Pakistan also accepted to offer military bases, overflight privileges, logistical support and intelligence to the American forces in Operation Enduring Freedom. Pakistani military also officially stopped their assistance to Taliban and ordered ISI to collaborate with intelligence agencies of America. Nonetheless, such apparent reversal served as a disguise to a more interesting fact, whereas Pakistan was playing a dual game at the same time, offering some support to American actions, but having informal links to Taliban groups, as well as secretly sponsoring a number of Mujahideen organizations, that were in accordance with Pakistan interests.

The facts depict that the Pakistani foreign policy is characterized by the tactical flexibility and strategic continuity. Although it seemed that Pakistan had turned its back on the Taliban at the pressure of the US, Pakistani strategists knew that as the American troops would eventually pull out of Afghanistan, Pakistan would require having a bargaining chip in the post-American era. The twofold policy of Pakistan was to suit various interests: it preserved the American strategic partnership and the military aid and assistance, it did not permit the American military to act against Pakistan itself, and it did not allow the Pakistani influence that could be pursued in Afghanistan due to the secret relations with Taliban elements. Nevertheless, this two-sided game was very destructive to the internal security of Pakistan. The militant groups that Pakistan was secretly sheltering or assisting including the Taliban started perceiving Pakistan as an untrustworthy partner since it was collaborating with the American forces at the same time. The citizens of Pakistan started being hunted down by militant groups as traitors due to American military operations. The backlash of the Afghan policy of Pakistan coupled with the consequences of the process of radicalization, which had been building up throughout the 1980s and 1990s, provided what would turn out to be an existential security threat to Pakistan on its own soil. The Taliban Pakistan, a group of Pakistani Taliban militants, known as Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), was the reaction to what the Taliban considered as the betrayal of the jihad mission by Pakistan.

The post-9/11 strategic turnaround of Pakistan, which on the surface level seemed to leave Taliban allies behind, was in fact a complex, attempted optionality which eventually led to domestic terrorism and destabilization of the region and the shortcomings of the idea of the double games in international relations practices.

RISE OF PAKISTANI TALIBAN: THE DOMESTIC CONSEQUENCES (2008-2014)

By mid-2000s, Pakistan had begun to reap the serious unintended effects of its decades old policy towards Afghanistan. Radicalization of the Pakistani society under the story of the Afghan jihad, the development ofaturements and militant groups formed during the Soviet-Afghan war, and the perceived Pakistani abandonment of the Taliban after 2001, all united to give rise to a homegrown insurgency. Taliban Pakistan, or the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which was created in December 2007 by a leader known as Baitullah Mehsud, was a coalition of several Pakistani militant organizations which aimed at ousting the Pakistani government and establishing an Islamic emirate in Pakistan. The TTP and its affiliate militant organizations engaged in suicide bombings, military raids and insurgency in the tribal regions and major cities of Pakistan. The period between 2009 and 2014 saw unprecedented militant violence in Pakistan, as more than 50,000 people were killed as a result of terrorist attacks on Pakistani Taliban insurgents and their affiliated networks. The foreign policy of Pakistan in Afghanistan took a back seat because of the pressing necessity to go about the terrorism crisis in the country. The strategists of the Pakistani understood that Afghanistan policy had ended up making their own enemies. The Pakistan had made so much investment in developing militant networks to project power in Afghanistan and to fight India was compelled to do counter-terrorism operations against the same networks.

The Afghanistan policy of Pakistan had generated a blowback of disastrous magnitudes after decades. Pakistan had developed networks, trained, supplied weapons and ideology which were now being used against Pakistan itself. The TTP and other affiliates were a culmination of ideologies and networks of militants that Pakistan had nurtured. The strategic miscalculation, according to the analysis of Haqqani, was that Pakistan had undertaken a policy of proxies of militant groups on the assumption that these groups could be manipulated and aimed at foreign enemies (initially, the Soviet), but the assumption turned out to be an elementary mistake. When radicalization was already a disease within Pakistani society, when weapons were now everywhere in the society, when militant networks now had an internal organizational autonomy, they could no longer be easily controlled and turned back. The emergence of the TTP was a turning point in the realization of Pakistan of its own Afghanistan policy the ramifications were no longer simply one of strategic gain or loss in Afghanistan but existential dangers to the Pakistani state form and citizen safety.

The emergence of domestic terrorism as a kind of blowback to Afghanistan policies caused Pakistan to rethink whether the strategic reward of its intervention in Afghanistan was worth the internal security cost, a problem that would guide policy-making in the next years.

ESCALATION OF CRISIS: THE CONTEMPORARY FLUX (2014-2026)

Since 2014, there has been marked transformation of the foreign policy of Pakistan toward Afghanistan, which will result in a historic escalation by February 2026. The full-fledged withdrawal of American troops initially planned in the year 2014 and fully achieved by August 2021 has provided a new strategic landscape. The re-establishment of the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan in August 2021, after the fall of the Afghan government, confirmed the long-term forecast of Pakistan that Taliban would finally go back to Afghanistan, after the US left. The Taliban government was recognized by Pakistan right after the August 2021 takeover and placed itself as a significant supporter and mediator of the Taliban government that was denounced by the world and seen to be going through a serious economic crisis.

But, the modern day relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan during Taliban has become so much controversial than expected. Even though the Taliban government shares similar views with Pakistan, in certain aspects, in recent times, the government has been demanding its nationalist interests and has opposed Pakistani efforts to dictate Afghan policies. Militant groups that have also been cross border have persisted especially the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and has continued to be a source of a flashpoint. This has seen Pakistan accuse the Taliban of sheltering TTP militants and the Taliban deny the accusations and have increasingly accused Pakistan of making internal security issues in Pakistan.

The tension in the border has grown to an extreme in 2024 and early 2025. In February 2025, Pakistan shut the important Torkham crossing of the border with Afghanistan over a row about the construction of Afghan border posts, trapping more than 5,000 trucks in severe winter and costing a loss of about 200 million dollars in trade. This event revealed weakness of Pakistan-Afghanistan ties in spite of Taliban being present in Kabul. In the meantime, there were still severe TTP-related violence of suicide bombings and armed attacks in Pakistan throughout 2025. On February 28, 2025, six people (including renowned Islamic scholar Hamid-ul-Haq) were killed in a suicide bombing of the Darul Uloom Haqqania seminary in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The crisis ended in a direct military confrontation that occurred in October 2025 and February 2026. On October 9, 2025, Pakistani airstrikes against Kabul on October 8, 2025 in response to an attack by TTP soldiers on Pakistani soldiers occurred, resulting in the death of Noor Wali Mehsud, who was the leader of the TTP. The target was spared but Pakistan said that the attacks destroyed important militant facilities. It was met with military operations by Afghanistan that killed at least 23 Pakistani soldiers. The resultant conflicts that took place across the border were the deadliest in years, with more than 70 dead on each side. On October 19, a ceasefire was brokered with Qatar and Turkey to no avail as peace talks in Istanbul later in the month of October met with no lasting agreements. The tribal areas were still targeted by the Pakistani military activities (Zarb-i-Azb and Radd-ul-Fasaad) to destroy militant havens.

This situation was even worsened in February 2026. After years of suicide attacks within Pakistan, including a February 6 bombing of a Shia mosque in Islamabad that killed 31 worshippers (claimed by ISIS-Khorasan), on February 22, 2026, Pakistan launched Operation Ghazab Lil Haq (“Righteous Fury”), airstriking seven suspected TTP and ISIS-K militant bases in the Nangarhar, Paktika and Khost provinces. Pakistan alleged that the attacks had killed more than 80 militants with essential infrastructure destroyed. Nonetheless, the Taliban government of Afghanistan claimed that 18 civilians, including 11 children in Nangarhar province, were killed by the strikes, and the civilians targets and religious centers were hit. Casualties on civilians were verified by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).¹

Retaliatory cross-border military operations by Afghanistan against Pakistan occurred on February 26-27, 2026, which the Afghan officials claimed as massive offensive attacks to Pakistani military installations on the Durand Line. Pakistan retaliated instantly with large scale air and ground operations. The most recent announcement was Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Asif announcing the two nations engaged in an open war, the first time since the Taliban took control in 2021. Pakistan claimed to have killed 133 Taliban and severe 9 Taliban posts. Afghanistan challenged these numbers and said it had plans of measured retaliations. The diplomatic mediation of Qatar was revived with the state minister of Qatar Mohammed bin Abdulaziz al-Khulaifi involving both parties. By February 27, 2026, the ceasefire was not yet solid, and interchangeable fire exchanges and no solution to the existing conflicts were made.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF CURRENT SITUATION

The contemporary news sources evidence shows that Pakistan-Afghanistan relations have been fundamentally changed. The initial policy of Pakistan facilitating the Taliban with hope of attaining strategic depth has been overruled by the nationalist ambitions and lack of desire to contain cross-border militant organizations by the Taliban. The Taliban government still retains some organizational continuity with Taliban movements, but currently has its own legitimacy issues, international standing issues, and internal security issues (especially ISIS-Khorasan insurgency).

The escalation in February 2026 is the watershed in the relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The fact that Pakistan declared an open war, Kabul was targeted with airstrikes, and Afghanistan retaliated show that Pakistan was hopelessly misreading the level of compliance of Taliban to the demands of Pakistani security. The Taliban have moved closer to nationalist discourses to deny Pakistan its conceptualization of cross-border terrorism as part of Pakistani national security, instead placing it as a part of Pakistan’s domestic problems.

The frequent border closures by Pakistan (February 2025, and threatened closures in February 2026) not only damage the trade and transit potential of Pakistan, but also have an impact on the economy of Afghanistan. RFE/RL reporting indicates that Afghanistan is actively using alternative trade routes via Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan) in order to avoid reliance on Pakistan. This is a long term strategic set back to Pakistan, which as history shows enjoyed the fringe of being the gateway of Afghanistan to the world markets.

The modern involvement of Pakistan in Afghanistan has changed to face direct military conflict with a Taliban government that declares nationalist demands and not dependent on the preferences of Pakistan and has shown the failure of the decades-long strategic policy that the country has had towards Afghanistan.

KEY BOTTLENECKS AND FUTURE REPERCUSSIONS

The foreign policy that Pakistan has had towards Afghanistan during the last seventy nine years has been through various changes due to the international conditions, changing positions of power and changing calculations of strategies. Since the beginning of the fight over the Durand Line, the Cold War, proxy wars in the Soviet-Afghan war, and Taliban regime support, post-9/11 realignment, the emergence of domestic terrorism, pragmatic engagement, and even direct military confrontation, the Afghanistan policy of Pakistan has been both consistent in its strategic objectives and quite adaptive in its approach. Nonetheless, by looking at this history, one can conclude that structural bottlenecks still affect the effectiveness of the foreign policy in Afghanistan and the scope of the possibility to establish mutually beneficial cooperation in Pakistan. The open war on February 2026 is the logical result of these contradictions, which reveals the primary ineffectiveness of the strategy of the Pakistani regime.

UNRESOLVED CONFLICT OF DURAND LINE

The basic border issue is still not dealt with whatsoever and is currently being fought out with the use of military force. Afghanistan still refuses to accept the Durand Line as a legal international border, but uses it as a tentative demarcation. The Pakistan considers the border as just under the international law and not negotiable. The Battle in February 2026 took place over a pure stretch of the Durand Line and it was alleged by both sides that there was a breach of territories. This continued conflict does not allow the establishment of the normal bilateral relationships and leaves the openness to the recurrent military conflicts on the demarcation of the borders, sharing of water, and refugees.

CRITICAL AGGRANDISATION OF CROSS-BORDER TERRORISM

In spite of the Taliban government of Afghanistan, Pakistan is still experiencing dire security challenges by a number of militant groups that operate out of the Afghanistan territory. The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has stepped up its activity, and it is one of the most violent years since 2011, as the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data analysis quoted by Al Jazeera shows. A suicide bombing in Darul Uloom Haqqania seminary conducted by TTP on February 2025 killed six people. In 2026 on February 6, 31 worshippers died at the Shia mosque bombing in Islamabad. On 19 February 2026, a child and 11 soldiers were killed in the attack on the checkpoint in Bajaur. ISIS-Khorasan still continues to organise high profile attacks that are a challenge to Taliban authority. The Taliban regime, with its priorities on consolidation of their own power and their own ISIS-Khorasan insurgency, has shown less ability and low willingness to go all the way to kill all militant groups who use the Afghan soil. This poses a continuing security threat where Pakistan cannot reallocate its military resources in development and economy other than border security.

HUMANITARIANISM CRISIS OF REFUEES

In Afghanistan, the largest refugee population in the world is accommodated by Pakistan (1.7 million refugees (as of 2024)). In 2025, the humanitarian crisis deepened, and the UN estimated a number of 2.9 million people coming back to Afghanistan. The situation in the refugee camps has worsened, the economic burden to the Pakistani limited resources has risen, environmental erosion in the borders areas has been boosted and the social tensions between the refugees and the local Pakistani groups have been intensified. The border closure that occurred in February 2025 saw the population of the refugee camps in dire conditions as they were caught in the middle of the winter season, and some of the families had to reside in cars or the open air. Afghanistan wants Pakistan to remain a refuge to the refugees, whereas Pakistan would want to share the international burden and give back the refugees. The National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) in Pakistan has been failing to facilitate the registration and management of the population of refugees in the country. The competing visions regarding the responsibility of refugees keep on putting the bilateral relations under strain and restricting the ability of Pakistan to invest in herself.

ECONOMIC IMBALANCES AND TRADE DISRUPTIONS

The efforts of Pakistan to form economic relations with Afghanistan are interrupted many times because of the closure of the borders and military tension. The loss of about $200 million in trade was a result of the February 2025 border crossing of the Torkham crossing, which led to the loss of trade by the Afghan traders. There were also threats of significant border crossings at Torkham and Chaman during the February 2026 conflict. The Taliban government in Afghanistan is very isolated internationally and this has restricted its ability to have a meaningful trade partnership. Pakistan also was apprehensive that economic integration would favor Afghanistan over Pakistan and establish dependency relations that will restrain the strategic freedom of Pakistan. The lack of certainty in the legitimacy of the Taliban government and the international isolation is a culpable situation to Pakistani investors and trading entities. At the same time, Afghanistan is actively considering other trade opportunities via Central Asia (The trade with the Central Asian states was up to $1.7 billion in 2024, and specifically Kazakhstan is aimed at achieving a bilateral trade of up to $3 billion). This is a tactical defeat of Pakistan that was in the past advantaged because it was the main trading port to Afghanistan.

REGIONAL GREAT POWERS STALEMATE

Competition among the other regional and great powers is crippling the Afghanistan policy of Pakistan. China, India, Iran, Russia, and the United States have their own interests in Afghanistan which often clash with the interests of Pakistan. In a report published by FDD and RFE/RL, China has held trilateral conferences with both Pakistan and Afghanistan (May 2025, August 2025) to facilitate the expansion of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) into Afghanistan. India has also been improving its relations with Afghanistan, with Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi visiting India in October 2025 where both nations agreed on the need to give improved relations. Russia also is in contact with the Taliban and local partners in Central Asia. Iran also has its network of influence in Afghanistan. This tripolar rivalry does not allow one of the various regional powers to gain total dominance and limits the usefulness of bilateral Pakistan-Afghanistan negotiations.

CONCLUSION

These bottlenecks reveal that the foreign policy of Pakistan towards Afghanistan cannot be limited by the decisions of this state or the failure of diplomats only but rather by the more profound structural, ideological and material restrictions which seem to have no resolution. The fact that the escalation to direct military confrontation on February 2026, shows that these bottlenecks have reached a critical point in which the contradictions can no longer be handled using minor adjustments. The effort by Pakistan to ensure strategic depth by having an obedient government in Afghanistan has led to Taliban government which insists on its independent interests and nationalist agenda. The issue of cross-border terrorism and security of Pakistan has not been addressed in spite of decades of military and intelligence campaigns. The role of Pakistan in the regional trade and connectivity is also diminishing because Afghanistan is establishing other partnerships with other states in Central Asia and China.

The Pakistani governments in the future have a very basic decision to make: do they persist in the strategy of military action and proxy networks (a formula which has yielded only limited success and tremendous expenses), or do they recognize that Afghanistan is never going to be a tool of Pakistan security policy and rather pursue a strategy of cooperation based on mutual benefit, respect of Afghani sovereignty, and management of the common challenges (terrorism, refugees, economic growth). The declaration of open war on February 2026 does indicate that Pakistan is still following the former path, which will probably lead to further escalation and destruction of both sides. It is still not clear from where Pakistan will eventually review its basic strategic strategy towards Afghanistan; this is a question with far reaching consequences not only to the two countries but also to the rest of the region.

1. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/26/afghanistan-says-it-launches-attacks-against-pakistan
   
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