Amid Pakistan-Afghanistan border clashes, Islamabad dreams to regain its ‘front-line’ status

Tara Kartha

The possibility is the US will once again consider backing a faction against the Taliban and start operations against the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, so Pakistan can get its ‘front line’ status back—and the dollars that go with it

The trouble is, as usual, emanating again from Pakistan. But this time, the efforts of the Pakistani establishment and its innumerable proxies in academia across the world are likely to lead to another conflagration in war-weary Afghanistan unless US intel is savvy enough to see through these machinations. The bait? That another 9/11 could come out of Afghanistan, through a combination of various groups, including the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). That means Pakistan again becomes the front-line state against terrorism. That’s the idea. This time it may not be that easy. The Taliban are not playing this particular game.

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Pakistan’s desperation

First is the fact that Pakistan has been hit, and hit hard, by terrorist attacks targeting its security forces. Data from the reliable Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies indicates a 70 per cent rise in terrorist attacks, to a total of 581 attacks. There’s another interesting statistic. Pakistani forces killed more ‘terrorists’—that is, about a 66 per cent rise. Statistics are one thing. Each one of those represents a life lost, and that too inside the tribal areas. That has its own escalatory spin-off, which Rawalpindi seems unable to recognise.

For instance, the entirely peaceful Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), offered to deal with the TTP, which is responsible for most of the violence, and tried to take a delegation to deal with escalating violence in Kurram, as part of tribal traditions. They were repulsed. Policemen in Lakki Marwat went up in rebellion against the army’s violent ‘counterterrorism’ operations. They were repulsed too. The end result? The Pakistanis decided to take up a ‘macho’ message, striking targets in Paktia, ironically the home district of Taliban foreign minister Muttaqi, even as seasoned Pakistani diplomat Mohammad Sadiq was in conversation with him. Sadiq, who has spent years in Afghanistan, was given a state welcome, accompanied by declarations of goodwill. Rawalpindi, however, decided to take the other route, killing more than 46, including children, in air attacks against alleged TTP camps. That was the baseline.

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Second, since then matters have worsened. TTP has since declared that any shopkeeper selling Pakistan Army-made goods or dealing with Pakistan Army businesses, such as the Askari Bank—or any of the other hundreds of businesses that a ‘corporate’ army has—would have dire consequences. Then it rapidly upended the situation by kidnapping some 16-odd persons from a uranium mining facility in Lakki Marwat. The Pakistan army responded with harassment of Afghans in other parts of Pakistan, even as Pashtuns suffer ethnic profiling across the country, and a peaceful jirga of the PTM was attacked on the grounds of ‘security’. The real threat? The fear that the Pashtuns are the primary base of imprisoned Prime Minister Imran Khan. Khan has always pleaded for talks with militants, and under his government, the province did surprisingly well. This is a politico-military battle, and Rawalpindi is losing the narrative.

Bizarre reach out

Third, as far as General Headquarters is concerned, matters came to a head when the Taliban spokesperson, while announcing retaliatory attacks, said, “We do not consider it to be the territory of Pakistan; therefore…it was on the other side of the hypothetical line.” That’s the end of the Durand Line for the near future. That led to several reactions. The ISI Chief was in Tajikistan, in a bizarre reach out to what was once the Northern Alliance—today the National Resistance Front (NRF), led by Ahmed Massoud, son of the legendary Ahmed Shah Massoud—killed two days before 9/11 and once a target of Pakistan intelligence.

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The reach-out smacks of desperation. The NRF alliance has since expanded from its home base of Tajik areas of Afghanistan, with nearly daily attacks against the Taliban in areas as far afield as Herat and Kabul. That means someone is providing funds. The alliance includes figures like Yasin Zia, a former Afghan army chief of staff; Sami Sadat, another former Afghan general; and a number of former Afghan National Army officers and men. It may also include those ethnic groups sidelined by the Taliban, like the Uzbek. In recent years it has had a new diplomatic life. From 2022 onwards, the NRF has been part of a “ Vienna Process” that includes many women and human rights participants, becoming an umbrella group for all anti-Taliban forces. One meeting was in Dushanbe, and by 2024 it had expanded to include some 60 groups. The Vienna group is supported by the Austrian Institute of International Affairs. Its funding is unclear. But the institute itself is associated with RAND Europe.

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Trump’s people step in

Recently, the NRF’s cause has been recognised in the US Congress, with Representative Tim Burchett introducing a resolution in Congress condemning the Taliban and calling for support for the Vienna process. That was referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. That was in September. Now he is back in the news questioning why the US continues to fund the Taliban. Amrullah Saleh, former head of Afghan intelligence, alleged that the US had just sanctioned $80,000,000 as aid to be brought in as cash in an aircraft for the Da Afghanistan Bank. Elon Musk jumped into the fray, questioning why taxpayer money was being used to fund the Taliban, to which Burchett, a strong Trump supporter, responded that the next attack in the US would be 100 per cent supported by the Taliban.

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Those are strong words. That was pretty much what Pakistani army chief Gen. Asim Munir said during his visit to Washington, when he tried to convince his counterparts that the TTP, together with Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, would pose a threat to Washington. Since the Taliban were, in fact, hitting the Islamic State at every opportunity, this fell on deaf ears.

But the narrative is shifting, as the Taliban continue to clamp down on women’s rights, including a new “Morality Law’ , which has the sanction of the reclusive Haibatullah, emir of the Taliban. That’s the Kandahar lobby, which is largely dominated by Pakistan-educated maulvis and is one of the issues that is driving Kandahar and Kabul apart. That regressive policy is also allowing the NRF to gain traction as a new US administration comes in, even as it is supported increasingly by major think tanks like Chatham House in the UK.

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Meanwhile, UN reports acknowledge that the Taliban is acting against the Islamic State-Khorasan and trying to control Al Qaeda. It also notes that the IS-K is heavily present in Nangarhar and Kunar provinces. These are also areas where the Lashkar-e-Tayyba and Jaish-e-Mohammad have long been present. Needless to add, these areas are not part of Pakistan’s bombing campaign. The UN Report also notes a possibility of the TTP emerging as an umbrella group for various terrorist organisations. It is as well to remember that the report is an amalgam of the intelligence provided by countries active in Afghanistan. That includes Pakistan as a prominent contributor.

Then consider that in October, the Justice Department documents the arrest of an Afghan in Oklahoma who was plotting an Election Day attack on behalf of the Islamic State. Given all these diverse elements, the possibility that the US will once again consider backing a faction against the Taliban and start operations against the TTP is entirely possible, especially if another attack appears to originate from this area. In other words, Pakistan will get its ‘front line’ status back—and the dollars that go with it, tame the Taliban, and at the same time eliminate a burgeoning Pashtun cross-border resurgence. It’s a triple strategy. And it could work.

Meanwhile, Pakistan has hosted a conference in its own country on women’s rights, attended also by Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Laureate who had to leave the tribal areas due to the extremist threat. That’s as ironic as it gets. Pakistan’s own record for women’s rights is abysmal. Pakistan is ranked 153 out of 156 nations in the World Economic Forum’s 2021 Global Gender Gap Report—the only countries ranked lower are Iraq, Yemen, and Afghanistan.

For India, for long a supporter of the erstwhile Northern Alliance and still sympathetic to its cause, the best bet would be to use its new reach to get the Taliban to bring in other ethnic groups and, at the very least, start a dialogue with elements of the NRF. That means bringing in the former Afghan army officers and men into the mainstream and possibly considering funding such an effort. If Pakistan is aiming for its own confluence of terror groups, India should attempt a unifying for stability. The alternative is another round of terrible violence on a hapless people and the possibility of a terrorist attack on the Indian mainland, ostensibly by this hotchpotch of terror groups now being melded together.

The writer is a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, New Delhi. She tweets @kartha_tara. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author.