THE martyrdom of 12 soldiers — the military’s highest single-day death toll from terrorist attacks this year — in two incidents in Balochistan this week is the likely catalyst for the change in tenor.

Pakistan’s displeasure with the Afghan Taliban’s accommodating approach to militant outfits (barring IS-K) on their soil has been expressed more sharply than usual, with two messages from the highest echelons of the state coming on consecutive days.

On Friday, the military’s media wing released a statement denouncing the “safe havens and liberty of action available to TTP in Afghanistan”. Then, yesterday, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif criticised the Taliban regime for “neglecting its duties as a neighbouring and fraternal country”, and for disregarding the counterterrorism commitments it had made in the Doha peace agreement.

“This situation cannot continue any longer,” he said. Although Mr Asif refrained from saying that Pakistan would engage in hot pursuit of terrorists across the border into Afghanistan, as he asserted some months ago, Pakistan’s patience with Kabul is clearly wearing thin.

The ISPR statement about the Afghan Taliban’s inaction vis-à-vis counterterrorism is particularly significant as the security establishment has thus far avoided commenting on the situation so directly. There is good reason for matters having deteriorated to this point.

When the Taliban marched into Kabul in August 2021, Pakistan’s leadership was sanguine in the belief that a ‘friendly’ regime had come to power next door. Subsequent events laid bare the fallacy of this assumption. The reality of the situation is reflected in a recent UN report which says that 20 terrorist groups enjoy “freedom of movement under the Taliban’s protection”.

Of these, the regime’s ties with the TTP are “the closest”; in fact, they are considered “part of the emirate”. The doctrine of ‘strategic depth’ appears to have unravelled comprehensively.

What can Pakistan do in this situation, aside from voicing its opprobrium to an Afghan dispensation that is impervious to being relegated to the status of an international pariah on account of its human rights violations? While bilateral efforts must continue, a regional approach is more likely to make headway.

Such efforts have already begun: in Beijing last month, China, Pakistan and Iran held their first trilateral meeting on the regional security situation. It bears considering that there is a chink in the armour of the Taliban. As the aforementioned UN report dwelt upon at some length, there is a growing schism within its leadership, between the ideologues in Kandahar and the ‘pragmatists’ in Kabul.

In January, a Chinese firm signed a multimillion-dollar deal to extract oil from the Amu Darya basin, the first significant foreign investment under the Taliban. The prospect of further such investment in cash-strapped Afghanistan — or the risk of losing it — would surely engage the interest of the pragmatists.

Published in Dawn, July 16th, 2023