Taliban leader Mullah Baradar with Pakistan’s ISI Chief Faiz Hameed

By Abubakar Siddique
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
August 15, 2024

Days after the Taliban seized power in 2021, Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed, the powerful head of Pakistan’s notorious Inter-Services Intelligence agency, took what seemed a victory lap in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

“Please don’t worry — everything will be OK,” he told a Western journalist while smiling and sipping tea in the five-star Sarena Hotel.

Allies Turn Into Enemies

But three years later, Pakistan’s sense of scoring a strategic victory by helping the Taliban to reclaim power has vanished as the Taliban-led government has cemented its position as Pakistan’s key foe.

Islamabad accuses the Taliban of sheltering the Tehrik-e Taliban (TTP), which has killed hundreds of its soldiers since 2021. Repeated Pakistani air strikes on the TTP’s alleged hideouts inside Afghanistan and diplomatic warnings of severe consequences have not led to the Taliban reigning in the group as Islamabad has frequently demanded.

On August 14, Torkham, the main border crossing connecting Pakistan and Afghanistan, remained closed for a third day after a firefight that injured several Taliban fighters and at least three Pakistani soldiers on August 12. The Taliban said three Afghan civilians were killed in the cross fire.

Such clashes are almost a weekly occurrence along their 2,500-kilometer border.

Frequent border closures and the expulsion of nearly 1 million impoverished Afghans from Pakistan have also failed to pressure Afghanistan’s current rulers to acquiesce to Islamabad’s demands.

“The situation has turned 180 degrees,” said Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud, news director at the Khorasan Diary, a website tracking militant groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan. “There is now a conflict situation inching toward a war.”

In a conciliatory gesture on Pakistan’s Independence Day on August 14, the country’s powerful army chief, General Asim Munir, asked the Taliban-led government to reciprocate Islamabad’s desire for cordial, cooperative relations.

He asked the Taliban-led government not to “prioritize” ties with the TTP over relations with Pakistan.

“Just as Pakistan has always helped you out, you should join us in finishing off this scourge,” he told a gathering of new military graduates.

Reverse Strategic Depth

But Michael Semple, a former EU and UN adviser to Afghanistan, told RFE/RL it would be difficult for the Taliban to give up on the TTP’s nearly two-decade campaign when it sees a tipping point given the grave political and economic crises engulfing Pakistan.

“Can the level of backing which [the TTP militants] are receiving from the Afghan Taliban change?” asked Semple, a professor at Queen’s University Belfast.

After the Taliban’s return to power, the TTP emerged with new vigor. It had retreated to Afghanistan in 2014 after a Pakistani military operation and U.S. drone attacks decimated its ranks and leadership.

As a close ideological and organizational ally, the TTP cloned the Taliban insurgency’s tactics. It mainly targeted security forces while establishing a shadow government to challenge Islamabad’s authority in some border regions.

Semple said there is now “mounting evidence” that the General Directorate of Intelligence, the Taliban spy service, is supporting the TTP with the blessing of its supreme leader, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada.

“There’s this dream of achieving the strategic depth — being sort of the senior partner in delivering a Shari’a-based system in Pakistan,” he said.

“Strategic depth” once denoted a Pakistani military doctrine. After Islamabad became a frontline state against the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, its military planners pushed for eventually dominating the neighboring country so it could be used as a rear base in case of a war with its archrival India.

In Islamabad, Mehsud said a sizeable number of Afghan Taliban fighters seem to be embedded in the TTP. He noted some Taliban-allied clerics have repeatedly issued fatwas or religious decrees supporting the TTP’s campaign in Pakistan.

“Things will keep on getting worse,” he said, adding that the Pakistani government claims at least 15 suicide bombers who conducted attacks in Pakistan were Afghan nationals.

Interdependence

But Sami Yousafzai, a veteran Afghan journalist and commentator, said high anti-Pakistan sentiment among Afghans who blame Islamabad for their misery prompted the Taliban to adopt hard-line public positions against Islamabad.

“Being seen as Pakistani proxy by the Afghans is a major disadvantage for the Taliban,” he said.

Islamabad’s covert military support enabled the Taliban to sweep through most of Afghanistan by 1996. Pakistan then joined Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to formally recognize the first Taliban-led government after it seized Kabul in September 1996.

“This relationship gets very tense at times, but they can still reach an understanding,” he said.

Hameed Hakimi, an Afghanistan expert at London’s Chatham House think tank, sees relations between the Taliban and Pakistan shifting toward greater interdependence.

He said Islamabad is unlikely to seek “instability in relations” with Afghanistan at a time when India is cementing its role as a regional hegemon because of its rising global clout.

He said the Taliban’s relations with Pakistani Islamist factions are much more profound than its ties with Islamabad’s security establishment.

“These contacts and networks immediately come into play when there is a risk of escalation of violence between Kabul and Islamabad,” he told RFE/RL.

Copyright (c) 2024. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.