Taliban Warns “Serious Reaction” if Pakistan Uses Force Inside Afghanistan

After Pakistan rebuked the Taliban for harboring militants, Kabul warned of a serious reaction if Islamabad used force inside Afghanistan. This highlights a dangerous trend in Pak-Afghan relations. 

Pakistan’s sore point is that the banned TTP continues to enjoy safe havens in Afghanistan and even managed to get its hands on sophisticated weapons. The Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, more commonly called the Pakistani Taliban, was behind the recent unrest in Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. The Pakistani Army condemned the attacks, saying such attacks are intolerable and would elicit effective response from the security forces of Pakistan. 

General Asim Munir accused the Islamic Emirate (Afghanistan) of not living up to its promise from a 2020 agreement with the U.S. to bar any terror group from using Afghan soil for attacks. But Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, said this is a naïve approach to shift the blame of one’s own failures to others and warned of serious reaction if Pakistan used force inside Afghanistan. 

This has sent Islamabad into shock because when the Taliban regained power in 2021 and the U.S left Afghanistan for good, Pakistan begged the international community to grant legitimacy to the Kabul regime. Pakistan also requested the United States to release billions of dollars of Afghan money to be used for humanitarian purposes. Pakistan went out of its way to ensure peace and stability in war-torn Afghanistan. But the Taliban has now dealt a hard blow to Pakistan. The Taliban has blamed Islamabad for letting the TTP run loose and rejected its role in fomenting cross-border terrorism. Pakistan, for decades has been bearing the brunt of having the Taliban as its most immediate neighbor. 

According to the Washington Institute, Afghanistan in its modern form was shaped by the 19^th century competition between the British, Russian and Persian empires for supremacy in the region. The 1907 Anglo-Russian Convention that formally ended this great game finalized Afghanistan’s role as a buffer between the Russian Empire’s holdings in Central Asia, and the British Empire’s holdings in India. 

In the Cold War, during the regime of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) Pakistan began to provide sanctuary to Afghan Mujahideen groups. And when the Soviet forces intervened in Afghanistan and remained there for 10 years, Pakistan provided safe havens to Afghan Jihadi groups.

It should be noted that CIA’s biggest covert operation was against the Soviet military occupation of Afghanistan, in which Pakistan and other countries helped establish safe havens in tribal areas from where the jihadi groups sneaked into Afghanistan to fight off the Soviet forces. 

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Tables turned on Pakistan when the Barack Obama administration accused Islamabad of allowing sanctuaries to Al-Qaeda and Taliban in the tribal areas. The U.S launched a series of drone attacks in Pakistan’s tribal areas to flush out the terror groups. 

Afghanistan and Pakistan share safe havens, and harbor terrorists.