Islamabad, Afghan Taliban Locked In Stalemate Over Pakistani Militants

The latest Pakistani air strikes inside Afghanistan have rekindled tensions between Afghanistan's Taliban rulers and Islamabad, who were once former allies.

While Pakistan has said it was targeting militant hideouts, Taliban officials said the December 24 attacks killed some 50 civilians. The Afghan Defense Ministry vowed that it "will not leave this despicable act unanswered."

Taliban officials said most of the victims were ethnic Pashtun refugees from Pakistan's Waziristan region and were targeted just across the border in Barmal, a district in the southeastern Afghan province of Paktika.

Pakistan defended the air strikes, saying its security forces acted along its western border with Afghanistan to "protect Pakistani people from terrorists."

Pakistani authorities have repeatedly blamed the Taliban, the militant group that claimed power again in Afghanistan in August 2021, for providing "hideouts and sanctuaries" to the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an Islamist militant group designated a terrorist organization by the United States. The TTP is banned in Pakistan and seeks to overthrow the government in Islamabad.

Experts say the latest tensions are indicative of the deadlock between the two neighbors, despite Islamabad's past support for Taliban militants.

"The Taliban and Pakistan are in a bind over the TTP," says Sami Yousafzai, a veteran Afghan journalist and commentator. "Both have no good options and face dilemmas."

Pakistani soldiers take positions as they search a house during a military operation against Taliban militants in the North Waziristan district. (file photo)

Following the militant group's return to power in 2021, the Taliban government facilitated peace talks between Islamabad and the TTP.

But the truce it brokered failed in November 2022.

Since then, the Taliban has resisted Pakistani demands to go after its longtime ideological and organizational ally, the TTP, by expelling it from Afghanistan or pressuring it to surrender to Islamabad. Pakistan has accused the Taliban of supporting terrorism by backing the TTP.

In Pakistan, the TTP has waged a violent campaign to reestablish control in the country's western border regions abutting Afghanistan. For the last two decades, TTP militants have controlled parts of this region, fighting an ongoing battle against the Pakistani military.

Hundreds of Pakistani security forces have been killed in the TTP attacks, while local civilians have suffered under the militant group's draconian rule. On December 21, the TTP claimed credit for killing 16 soldiers in South Waziristan.

The Taliban government is reluctant to move against the TTP, Yousafzai says, because the militant group's presence in Afghanistan is "just one part of a very complicated problem."

Yousafzai says Islamabad's demand that the Afghan Taliban solve the TTP issue "is not practical" because of the high anti-Pakistan sentiment among Afghans. "The Taliban is keen on ridding itself of the label that it once served Islamabad's interests," he says.

Islamabad partnered with Washington in its war on terror after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. But Pakistan also provided clandestine support to the Taliban insurgency that ultimately toppled the pro-Western Afghan republic.

This has won Pakistan few friends among Afghans, who blame Islamabad for their country's troubles.

Tehrek-e Taliban Pakistan chief Noor Wali Mehsud (left) appears with another group leader in an undated photo.

Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud, news director at the Khorasan Diary, a website tracking militant groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan, says there is now little convergence of interests between the Taliban and Pakistan.

"Islamabad has exhausted all of its options to pressure the Taliban," he says.

The December 24 strikes were the fourth time Pakistani jets have bombed targets inside Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

Since October 2023, Islamabad has expelled nearly 1 million undocumented Afghans. Pakistan has said those Afghans were living in the country illegally. Some of those expelled went to their ancestral villages, including in Paktika.

Pakistan has repeatedly closed its seaport and border crossings for trade with landlocked Afghanistan, further squeezing the country's struggling economy under the Taliban.

"None of these tactics has worked in the past, and it is unlikely to pressure the Taliban to abandon the TTP now," he said.

Mehsud says many in the Taliban feel "strongly obliged" to help the TTP, because it fought against the Pakistani military in the past to protect the Taliban and hosted their leaders and members while they were in exile in the country. "They are brothers in arms because of the ideological and ethnic relations," he says.

Pakistan's special representative for Afghanistan, Muhammad Sadiq (center left), met the Taliban's interior affairs minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani, in Kabul on December 24.

Successive TTP leaders have pledged religious allegiance to the Taliban leaders, who preach an ultra-conservative form of Islam. Leaders of both groups are ethnic Pashtuns and have deep personal ties. Islamabad has also claimed a growing number of Afghans are fighting for the TTP.

There is little hope that the impasse between the two sides can be solved anytime soon. "The Afghan Taliban is likely to push for gaining something major for the TTP, such as a formal recognition of its control over some region in Pakistan," Mehsud says.

But he sees Islamabad as unwilling to make such sweeping concessions.

Residents of Pakistan's northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, where the TTP is most active, have held demonstrations against the militant group's return.

"Pakistan is likely to continue diplomatic engagement with the Taliban and kinetic actions against the TTP simultaneously," he said.

On December 24, Pakistan's special representative to Afghanistan, Mohammad Sadiq, held talks with senior Taliban officials as his country's military bombed alleged TTP hideouts inside the country.

Carrying out air strikes while diplomatic efforts are ongoing demonstrates Islamabad's "complete disregard for another nation's prestige and sovereignty," says Obaidullah Baheer, visiting fellow at the South Asia Center at the London School of Economics.

He says Islamabad needs a "very clear strategy" for dealing with the TTP, because it cannot expect the Afghan Taliban to make an enemy out of its ally.

Another consideration, Baheer says, is that the Taliban fears pushing the TTP into the arms of Islamic State-Khorasan. The ultraradical group, a Taliban archenemy, claimed responsibility for killing a Taliban minister on December 11.

"The TTP is probably the only leverage the Taliban has over Pakistan," Baheer says.