Borrowed trouble

Last October, Pakistan struck a target in Afghanistan that its officials called a “base of operations for terrorism in Pakistan” belonging to Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan—the Pakistani Taliban—which it says Afghanistan’s Taliban government harbors. Before Qatar and Turkey brokered a temporary ceasefire, Pakistan claimed it had killed some 200 Taliban fighters; the Taliban said they had killed dozens of Pakistani security forces.

Toward the end of the year, Saudi-mediated negotiations floundered. On February 16, a suicide bomber killed 11 Pakistani security personnel and one child, Pakistani officials said. On February 22, Pakistan hit Afghanistan with retaliatory strikes. And on March 16, Pakistan struck a drug rehabilitation center in Kabul; the Taliban government says the strike killed more than 400 people. The United Nations’ mission in Afghanistan has confirmed 269 civilian deaths so far and says the toll is likely higher. The UN estimates that more than 115,000 people have fled their homes since late February.

Pakistan’s minister of defence, Khawaja Asif, says Pakistan is in “open war” with Afghanistan. China is now trying to broker a ceasefire, but the mood in Islamabad is not propitious. Speaking to the Financial Times, Asif Durrani, Pakistan’s erstwhile special representative on Afghanistan, said there’s “no more room for diplomatic leverage with the Taliban, only hard talk and kinetic actions.”

What’s going on?

Anatol Lieven is the director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Having backed the Taliban, Pakistan is now in outright conflict with them in the unruly border regions where Pashtun tribes live—and from whose ranks many Islamist fighters come. Pakistan is trying to force Afghanistan’s Taliban government to keep the Pakistani Taliban in check. Afghanistan’s Taliban government, however, worries that cracking down on the Pakistani Taliban could trigger a civil war.

Pakistan, Lieven says, is in a fix. It has no good options. Pakistan can hit Taliban bases in Afghanistan, but the Taliban have survived much worse—so Pakistan’s military options might be spectacularly violent without being effective. And while Pakistan can try to pressure Afghanistan’s Taliban government by choking off its trade routes, squeezing Afghanistan’s economy too hard risks plunging the country into an even worse crisis. That, Lieven says, would leave the path open for groups like the Islamic State to export yet more violence …

Gustav Jönsson: Pakistan has long backed the Taliban—why?

Anatol Lieven: Pakistan needs to keep its own Pashtun areas quiet; over the years, it’s faced repeated rounds of unrest there. And the militarization of this area—the tremendous increase in modern weapons—came from an American-backed project in the 1980s to support the Afghan mujahideen. Their bases were in exactly the same areas where the Afghan Taliban later based themselves, and where the Pakistani Taliban launched their revolt against the Pakistani state.