Afghan-Pak Conflict: An Unending Crisis On The Durand

Afghanistan and Pakistan stand at the precipice of open war as peace talks in Istanbul collapse, exposing the catastrophic failure of Islamabad's decades-long gamble on the Taliban. Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Asif's warning this week was stark: if diplomatic efforts fail, the two nations will engage in "open conflict." The talks broke down over the very allegation that has haunted Pakistan for decades: cross-border terrorism but this time, instead of being called a perpetrator, Pakistan finds itself on the receiving end.

The immediate trigger appears mundane in the region's blood-soaked ledger: Pakistan sought Taliban assurances that Afghan soil wouldn't be used to stage terror attacks against it, specifically by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Kabul refused, calling Islamabad's demands lacking in "seriousness" while Pakistan accused the Taliban of "stubbornness". The talks, mediated by Qatar and Turkey, aimed to defuse weeks of deadly cross-border clashes that have killed over 80 soldiers on both sides since October began. Five Pakistani soldiers and 25 militants died just Sunday, even as delegations sat in Istanbul, a grim testament to the futility of the exercise.

The Historical Irony: From "Breaking Shackles" to Broken Dreams

Rewind to August 2021. As Kabul fell to the Taliban and desperate Afghans clung to departing American aircraft, plummeting to their deaths, Pakistan's then-Prime Minister Imran Khan was jubilant. At a ceremony launching Pakistan's national curriculum, Khan proclaimed the Taliban had "broken the shackles of slavery" and celebrated Afghanistan's liberation from foreign occupation. Religious seminaries across Pakistan hoisted the Taliban emirate's flag in solidarity. The army-installed premier's triumphalism seemed vindicated: after decades of nurturing Afghan jihadists, Pakistan's "strategic depth" policy had finally delivered a pliant Kabul.

Four years later, that strategic depth has become strategic quicksand. The Taliban regime, Pakistan championed now shelters the very militants killing Pakistani soldiers, refuses to recognize the legitimacy of the Durand Line, and has cozied up to Pakistan's arch-rival India. As one analyst put it, Pakistan has gone from strategic depth to "strategic despair".

The Durand Line: South Asia's Forever Wound

At the heart of this forever conflict lies the Durand Line, a 2,640-kilometer colonial cartographic imposition that has bled continuously since British diplomat Mortimer Durand drew it in 1893. Designed as a buffer between British and Russian spheres during the Great Game, the line sliced through Pashtun heartlands, creating an artificial border that Afghanistan has never recognized. For Pakistan, the border represents territorial integrity; for Afghanistan, it's a historical wound dividing a people.

The violence tells the story. Fresh clashes along the Durand Line in October 2025 alone have killed over 80 soldiers. Pakistan reported that TTP militants launched 22 attacks from Afghan soil in just two weeks between June 16-30, 2024. The deadliest year? 2025 is on track to surpass even 2024, when Pakistan recorded 1,081 terrorism-related deaths, a staggering 45 percent increase from the previous year. Pakistani airstrikes on October 9-10 targeted TTP positions in Kabul, Khost, Jalalabad, and Paktika. The Taliban Defense Ministry confirmed retaliatory strikes hit "several points" in Pakistan, with one Pakistani paramilitary commander killed and seven severely injured.

In April 2025, Pakistani forces killed 71 terrorists attempting to infiltrate through the Hassan Khel area in North Waziristan, the highest single-engagement casualty toll in Pakistan's entire counterterrorism campaign. The sheer volume of violations demonstrates that the Durand Line isn't a border; it's a bleeding fault line in South Asia's fractured geopolitical landscape.

Pakistan's Internal Hemorrhaging

Pakistan's Afghanistan crisis unfolds against a backdrop of comprehensive state failure. The country ranks second globally in terrorism-related deaths, according to the Global Terrorism Index 2025. The TTP, emboldened by Taliban rule across the border, carried out 482 attacks claiming 558 lives in 2024, nearly double the 293 deaths in 2023. The Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) has emerged as an equally lethal threat, orchestrating 171 attacks in Balochistan alone, a 119 percent increase from the previous year.

Nearly 95 percent of terrorist violence concentrates in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces, transforming Pakistan's western periphery into a warzone. Compounding this security nightmare is economic catastrophe: Pakistan teeters on the brink of default, forcing it to accept IMF austerity while spending scarce resources on a military campaign it cannot sustain. Political instability with former Prime Minister Imran Khan imprisoned and civil-military relations at their "lowest point in history" has paralysed governance precisely when a coherent counterterrorism strategy is most needed.

The cruel paradox: Pakistan's decades-long support for Afghan jihadists was meant to provide strategic depth against India. Instead, it has created a two-front security nightmare. As one Pakistani defense analyst warned, simultaneous pressure from Afghanistan in the west and India in the east would present "a formidable strategic test unseen since 1971": the year Pakistan lost Bangladesh.

The Myth of Islamic Brotherhood Shatters

The Afghanistan-Pakistan rupture demolishes any lingering illusions about pan-Islamic solidarity in South Asia. Pakistan positioned itself for decades as the champion of Muslim causes, yet when its "Muslim brothers" in Kabul needed guidance, the Taliban chose autonomy and increasingly, alignment with non-Muslim India.

No concept illustrates this failure more starkly than Pakistan's "strategic depth" doctrine. Formulated in the 1980s by General Mirza Aslam Beg, the policy envisioned Afghanistan as Pakistan's backyard, a subservient buffer state that would provide territorial fallback space against India and eliminate Afghan support for Pashtun and Baloch separatism. Pakistan spent billions cultivating Taliban proxies, fought alongside the mujahideen against the Soviets, and defied American pressure to maintain these assets.

The return on investment? The Taliban freed thousands of TTP fighters from Afghan jails immediately upon seizing Kabul in 2021. They refuse to act against TTP commanders operating from Paktika, Khost, and Nangarhar provinces. Taliban Defense Minister Mullah Yaqoob has publicly stated interest in India training Afghan troops, a dagger aimed directly at Pakistan's strategic heart. And when Pakistan repatriated Afghan refugees in 2024, Yaqoob warned: "As you sow, so shall you reap".

As terrorism expert Siegfried Wolf concluded, Pakistan is "reaping the bitter fruits" of instrumentalising jihadism as foreign policy. The myth of Islamic brotherhood has collided with the hard reality that nationalism transcends religion; every state acts in its national interest, even when they share religious identity.

India-Afghanistan: The New Axis

Perhaps nothing epitomizes Pakistan's strategic failure more than the burgeoning India-Afghanistan relationship. In early October 2025, as Pakistani and Afghan forces exchanged fire along the Durand Line, Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi was in New Delhi for a week-long visit, the first by a Taliban official to India since the 2021 takeover.

The outcome was a geopolitical earthquake. India announced it would restore full diplomatic relations and upgrade its Technical Mission in Kabul to a full embassy. The Taliban agreed to send two diplomats to New Delhi by November. In their joint statement, both sides "unequivocally condemned all acts of terrorism emanating from regional countries," diplomatic code for Pakistan. The Taliban backed India's sovereignty over Jammu and Kashmir, triggering a formal Pakistani protest to Kabul.

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar emphasized India's "full commitment to Afghanistan's sovereignty, territorial integrity, and independence," while Muttaqi assured that Afghanistan would prevent its territory from being used against India. For Pakistan, which fought against Soviet and American forces in Afghanistan for five decades specifically to prevent an Afghan-Indian alliance, this represents the "failure of Pakistan's Afghan policy over the last five decades," as one analyst noted.

The Forever Conflict

As the Istanbul talks collapse and Khawaja Asif warns of "open war," the fundamental contradictions remain unresolved. Pakistan demands Taliban action against the TTP; the Taliban view the Pakistani Taliban as ideological brothers who made "many sacrifices" to return them to power. Pakistan insists on the Durand Line's legitimacy; Afghanistan considers it "merely a line" imposed by colonial powers. Pakistan wants a dependent client state in Kabul; the Taliban assert autonomy and court regional powers, including China, Russia, Iran, and now India on their own terms.

The international community watches nervously. China, with $62 billion invested in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, has urged de-escalation while hosting trilateral talks. The United States, having spent $2.3 trillion on the Afghan war, maintains a studied distance. India, emboldened by improving Taliban ties, sees Pakistan's western distraction as a strategic opportunity.

What began in 1893 with Mortimer Durand's pen continued in 2025 with airstrikes, artillery barrages, and bodies counted in the dozens. Pakistan's gamble on strategic depth has produced strategic encirclement, a hostile Afghanistan to the west, a resurgent India to the east, internal insurgencies in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and economic collapse at home. The Taliban, whom Imran Khan celebrated for "breaking the shackles of slavery," have instead broken the chains binding them to Islamabad.

In the unforgiving calculus of South Asian geopolitics, where the failure of Islamic brotherhood meets the enduring reality of the Durand Line dispute, one truth emerges with brutal clarity: the Afghan-Pak conflict is one that keeps on giving.

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