By Abubakar Siddique
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
August 1, 2024

The killing of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of the EU- and U.S.-designated Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, has thrown the Middle East into crisis.

But his assassination in a suspected Israeli strike in Iran on July 31 and the heightened risk of a broader war also have implications in the wider region, including for Iran’s eastern neighbors, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Experts say Kabul and Islamabad will likely struggle with the security, economic, and political fallout from a major escalation in the Middle East.

But a potential regional war involving Iran is unlikely to directly drag in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and Pakistan, both of which have cordial relations with Tehran, experts say.

“The attacks will not draw either country into direct participation in the conflicts such as by offering to send fighters,” said Marvin Weinbaum, director of Afghanistan and Pakistan studies at the Middle East Institute think tank in Washington.

Pakistan and the Taliban both directly blamed Israel for Haniyeh’s assassination, which Tehran has also blamed on its archenemy.

Islamabad denounced the killing as an act of “terrorism,” and hundreds of supporters of a Pakistan Islamist party held a symbolic funeral for Haniyeh near Islamabad on July 31.

‘Making Life Harder For Afghans’

Iran is on friendly terms with the Taliban. Tehran is also the biggest trading partner of the cash-strapped and internationally unrecognized Taliban-led government. Kabul is dependent on Iranian ports for most of its imports and exports amid tensions with neighboring Pakistan.

The Islamic republic is also home to around 4 million Afghan migrants and refugees. The remittances they send back home keep many impoverished families afloat in Afghanistan, which has grappled with an economic crisis since the Taliban takeover in 2021.

Graeme Smith, a senior Afghanistan analyst at the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, said rising tensions in the Middle East “could have destabilizing consequences for the fragile situation in Afghanistan.”

Smith said the risk is that a conflict involving Iran will harden the country’s borders with Afghanistan, “making life harder for Afghans.”

He said Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis, the largest in the world, could worsen if its borders with Iran are closed.

“The exit route from that crisis depends on renewed trade across the region,” he said. “[But it] requires borders opening to the flow of goods and labor.”

Pakistan Not To Become ‘Directly Involved’

Hundreds of thousands of Afghans and millions of Pakistanis work as laborers and traders in the oil-rich Arab Gulf countries.

A potential regional war could disrupt the flow of Afghan and Pakistani migrant workers heading to the Gulf. That would deal a major blow to Afghanistan and Pakistan, both of which are both heavily dependent on remittances sent from abroad.

In Pakistan, some political parties and the media have called for Islamabad to take a more hard-line approach to Israel, which is not formally recognized by the South Asian country.

But Weinbaum said the “general feeling among [Pakistani] policymakers is that the country has enough security concerns of its own not to become directly involved.

Faced with rising militant attacks in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the southwestern province of Balochistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, Islamabad’s choices are limited.

“There are also worries about an American reaction if Pakistan makes any military commitments [to Iran],” Weinbaum said.

Afghanistan and Pakistan are home to millions of Shi’ite Muslims. And Iran, a Shi’a-majority country, could look to Shi’ite communities living in its eastern neighbors for recruits in the event of a war.

During the Syrian civil war, Iran recruited, trained, and armed thousands of Shi’ite fighters from Afghanistan and Pakistan to fight. Many of those fighters who survived have returned home as the war has died down.

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