It is vital to note that Pakistan’s government and military are not monolithic institutions, but teams with competing interests. With this in mind, it is true that those teams were sometimes in favor of a Taliban victory. After the Taliban took Kabul, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said the Taliban were “breaking the chains of slavery. “
There are three long-standing and overlapping reasons for Khan’s public show of support. First, Pakistan has invested ideological interests in the Taliban. Pakistan was established in 1947 as a Muslim nation, and Islam was the glue that was intended to hold together many different disparate communities with varied linguistic and ethnic identities. But it was a struggle. In 1971, after a bitter civil war, much of Pakistan’s territory in the east, ruled through the Bengali-speaking community, seceded to become Bangladesh. The loss has made the Pakistani government especially paranoid about the western territories of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. which have gigantic Pashtun or Pashto-speaking populations. Pakistan established madrassas in those territories to emphasize and teach a strict type of Islam in the hope that Islamic nationalism would suppress Pashtun nationalism. Taliban leaders, who also embrace Islamic nationalism, were trained in those madrassas.
Second, Pakistani officials worry about the border with Afghanistan and believe that a Taliban government could ease their concerns. Since 1947, Afghan governments have rejected the Durand Line, which separates Pakistani Pashtun-dominated territories from Afghanistan. Afghanistan, home to a Pashtun majority, claims these territories as a part of a “Pashtunistan” or traditional Pashtun homeland. Pakistan’s government believes that the Taliban’s ideology emphasizes Islam over Pashtun identity.
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Third, it is imperative for Pakistan to have a Pakistan-friendly government established in Afghanistan. Pakistan accuses India of seeking to exploit its ethnic and linguistic divisions to destabilize and break up the country. India’s good relationship with former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s government did nothing to assuage this concern. A Taliban government could help Pakistan counter India, including by providing a haven for anti-India jihadi groups.
Pakistan remains a major source of monetary and logistical income for the Taliban. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) company has helped the Taliban since its inception by offering them money, education and weapons. The ISI also has close ties to the Taliban, which is based in Pakistan. Haqqani Network, a militant organization that works heavily with the Taliban. (Sirajuddin Haqqani, the head of the Haqqani network, has also been deputy head of the Taliban since 2015. )The Taliban own real estate in Pakistan and receive giant donations from Americans in the country.
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At the same time, under U. S. pressure, Pakistan has over the years arrested — and allegedly tortured — Taliban commanders, adding Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, one of the Taliban’s founders who has now returned as one of the group’s more sensible members. In addition, the current head of the Pakistani army, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, is more cautious about the Taliban’s prospects of destabilizing Pakistan.
In the future, Pakistan’s influence over the Taliban would likely wane. The Taliban have shown no unusual political sense in trying to forge ties with China, Iran and Russia. If China, Pakistan’s closest best friend, decides to recognize the Taliban, it will do so half-heartedly because of the virulent devout nationalism espoused by the Taliban and Pakistan. In fact, it may also expand to China’s Xinjiang region, where the Chinese government has used accusations of separatism to crack down on Uyghur Muslims.
Pakistan is playing a risky game by supporting the Taliban. Its purpose of containing Pashtun nationalism and countering India through a Pakistan-friendly government in Afghanistan ignores neither the whims of the Taliban nor the fundamentalist forces at war in Pakistan.
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In a demonstration of its sensitivity to the Durand Line, Pakistan has spent millions of dollars in recent years to demarcate it. However, the Taliban, like other Afghan governments, have accepted neither the Durand Line nor Pakistan’s attempts to physically demarcate it. Nor did the Taliban ever renounce or condemn the Afghan purpose of a Pashtunistan.
To further complicate matters, the Taliban have close ties to Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP), called the Pakistani Taliban. The TTP contains small Pashtun militant teams sympathetic to the Taliban, operate along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and vow to wage war on Pakistan until it achieves an independent Pashtunistan. The TTP is to blame for the deaths of several thousand Pakistani civilians. Acknowledging the connection between the Afghan Taliban and the TTP, General Bajwa reportedly warned Pakistani lawmakers that the teams were “two sides of the same coin. “
Moreover, if Afghanistan once again descends into civil war, Pakistan will have to cope with another huge flow of refugees. Last year, an estimated 1.4 million Afghan refugees were living in the country.
Finally, Pakistan could jeopardize its relations with China if Afghanistan (as well as Pakistan) becomes a haven for Muslim separatists, adding to the disgruntled Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
The United States faces a complex scenario in South Asia and in its bilateral relations with Pakistan. The U. S. government has long invested in Pakistan in exchange for cooperation in the fight against terrorism, but this has yielded limited dividends given Pakistan’s regional security interests.
Now, Washington has two additional elements to consider. The first is its deepening strategic partnership with India. Over the past few years, India has become more receptive to U.S. overtures for closer security ties. Given these gains in the U.S.-India relationship, the United States should be extremely careful in its relationship with Pakistan; any sense that Washington is not using what clout it has to rein in Pakistan’s backing of cross-border terrorism will jeopardize its relationship with New Delhi.
The detail of the moment is China’s growing interest in the region. Although the Chinese government is unlikely to stoke devout terrorism in the region, it will seek to work with the Taliban and perhaps even incorporate Afghanistan into its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Any U. S. strategy seeks to compensate for Chinese investments. And China also has influence with Pakistan. One option for the U. S. is to use China’s fears about devout nationalism and militancy originating in Afghanistan to pave the way for a cooperative strategy between the U. S. , China, and Pakistan to exert pressure on the Taliban.