Wolves at the door and a death by a thousand cuts – Firstpost
For decades, Pakistan has played a duplicitous game, straddling the line between statecraft and subterfuge. It cultivated militants as instruments of foreign policy while posturing as a responsible partner in the war on terror. The act is unraveling. Recent clashes with the Taliban government in Kabul have laid bare Islamabad’s vulnerabilities, forcing Pakistan to confront the consequences of nurturing the very forces now threatening its stability.
The latest spark in this smouldering rivalry came in early December, when Pakistani jets struck targets in Afghanistan’s Kunar and Khost provinces. Islamabad claimed the strikes hit Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) hideouts. The result, however, was a grim tally of Afghan civilians. The Taliban’s response was swift but calibrated. It struck Pakistani military posts along the border, avoiding civilian casualties but delivering a blow to the army’s pride. The message was clear—Pakistan’s habit of operating across the Durand Line with impunity is no longer tolerated.
The Border that Never Was
At the heart of the discord lies the Durand Line, a legacy of British colonial cartography drawn in 1893. Afghanistan has never recognised this frontier, viewing it as an artificial gash through Pashtun tribal lands. The Taliban, like their predecessors, dismiss the border as illegitimate, treating it as a line drawn on someone else’s map. Pakistan, for its part, has long insisted otherwise. Yet maps matter little to the Pashtun tribes straddling both sides, bound by blood, trade, and tradition.
Islamabad’s attempts to enforce the Durand Line through fences and military patrols have been met with disdain and, more recently, gunfire. For Afghanistan, this is a matter of national identity. For Pakistan, it is a more immediate concern—a porous border offering sanctuary, from which they can launch attacks into its restive and dirt-poor northwest.
The Gathering Storm
Pakistan’s real problem is not Kabul’s rhetoric but the launchpads for TTP. These sanctuaries offer militants the means to sow chaos in Pakistan’s tribal belt, where resentment already simmers. Islamabad faces an unenviable choice. A full-scale confrontation with the Taliban risks stoking a broader Pashtun insurgency, while limited strikes invite further retaliation. Pakistan’s military might be well-drilled for conventional warfare, but it has little appetite for another grinding insurgency, particularly when one is already bleeding resources in Balochistan.
More troubling for Pakistan is its deteriorating intelligence network across the Afghan border. Lacking reliable eyes and ears, Islamabad resorts to the blunt tool of airstrikes—effective at stoking nationalist fervour but disastrous for long-term strategy.
Pashtun Ties and the Religious Thorn
A deeper, more existential threat looms in the form of growing Pashtun solidarity. The Taliban’s resurgence has rekindled cross-border ethnic unity, challenging Pakistan’s authority in its Pashtun-majority Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Pashtun nationalism is a force Islamabad can ill afford to provoke.
Worse still is the ideological conundrum. Since the days of Zia-ul-Haq, Pakistan has cultivated Islamist hardliners, pivoting toward Wahhabism to secure domestic control and regional leverage. Yet the Taliban’s demand for sharia governance exposes Islamabad’s hypocrisy. How does Pakistan, a nation that championed sharia under Zia, confront an Afghan regime whose vision of Islam mirrors its own? Kabul’s insistence on Islamic rule poses an unsettling question for Pakistan’s leadership—how do you fight an enemy that reflects your state’s ideological trajectory?
Strategic Depth No Longer
Pakistan’s old doctrine of ‘strategic depth’—the notion that Afghanistan provides a buffer against India—is fading into irrelevance. The Taliban’s defiance signals that Pakistan’s long-standing influence over Kabul has waned. Adding to Islamabad’s headaches, tensions with Iran are rising along Pakistan’s western flank, while the eastern border with India remains volatile. Strategic depth has given way to encirclement.
Finally, Islamabad cannot credibly decry Afghan-based terror while continuing to shelter Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed operatives within its own borders. This contradiction chips away at Pakistan’s moral standing abroad and exposes its diminishing leverage at home.
A Thousand Cuts, No Easy Cure
Pakistan finds itself trapped, not by a single decisive blow, but by the relentless grind of insurgency, ethnic tension, and cross-border attacks—a death by a thousand cuts.
The writer is a senior journalist with expertise in defence. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.
Post Comment