The global security scenario shows that the existing world order is collapsing, unilateralism is replacing multilateralism, global peace is being commercialised and low-cost indigenous weapons and drones are changing war itself.
While the consequences of this scenario must be evaluated, the regional security calculus is no less urgent. It is shaped by three interlinked factors: the growing US-China rivalry and its implications for Pakistan; India’s emerging doctrine and its use of water as a strategic instrument; and, most importantly, the sharp deterioration in relations with Afghanistan.
It is this third factor that is the most serious fault line. Instability in Afghanistan, the continuing bloodshed by the TTP in Pakistan and the ideological affinity between the TTP and the Afghan Taliban together create conditions that could invite renewed international intervention in Afghanistan. Unlike the previous intervention directed against the Soviet Union, the renewed intervention will be rooted in strategic rivalry with China. Containing China will be facilitated by a US foothold in Afghanistan, as well as militants gaining further strength in the region. A war between Pakistan and Afghanistan would serve this strategic objective.
US President Trump has repeatedly spoken of regaining control of Bagram Air Base. The Doha agreement of 2020, the hurried American withdrawal and installation of Taliban-2 in Kabul, the mysterious release of thousands of imprisoned TTP militants from Afghan jails and $7 billion of sophisticated military equipment left behind in the hands of the TTP have already laid the foundations for militants’ resurgence.
This is not surprising. Partnerships with local non-state militant groups have been observed in the past. In Syria, a $10 million bounty was announced for the capture of Ahmed al-Sharaa, leader of an Al-Qaeda affiliate entity, which was withdrawn to overthrow Bashar al-Assad and install al-Sharaa instead.
In Iraq, various local community forces were similarly used. In Iran, non-state actors were leveraged to check state actors. The recent US voting against the Pak-China move to blacklist the BLA and the Majeed Brigade in the UNSC and its continuing $40 million a week cash assistance to keep Taliban-2 in Kabul in place is also viewed by many in this context.
When in October 2023 a caretaker government decided to throw out all Afghan refugees, including those possessing ‘proof of residence’ (POR) cards, leaving them at the mercy of the Afghan Taliban, it created hostility among the Afghan populace. Later military clashes were increasingly perceived by many Afghans as hostility directed not merely against the Taliban regime but against the Afghan people themselves.
In June 2025, Russia recognised the Taliban regime, the first country to do so despite its own and the UN reports admitting that Afghanistan is hosting militant organisations. In May 2026, it even signed a defence cooperation agreement with Kabul. The gamble will only further strengthen the TTP and complicate the security calculus.
Sadly, little attention has been paid to the Afghan dimension of regional security here in Pakistan. This is because questioning the Afghan policy is not favoured. Mainstream media and political parties also often bend over backwards to please the state and, being far from the centre of conflict, feel a false sense of safety and security.
We must keep an eye on the evolving regional situation and guard against unwittingly contributing to escalating tensions with Afghanistan.
As the Soviet Union example showed, no fleets of submarines, squadrons of F-16s and strategic weapons are enough to save a country with other grave fault lines.
And can it be claimed that public confidence in the state security narrative is not fractured? Over the last 45 years, the narrative has called Afghans our mohajireen brothers. In the early 1980s, when US president Reagan called the Taliban leaders ‘moral equivalents of George Washington’, our narrative also praised the Taliban.
After 9/11, when the US declared ‘a good Taliban is a dead Taliban’, General Musharraf also claimed to decimate the Taliban. When in August 2021, the Taliban were helped militarily to capture Kabul, we also hailed them for “breaking the shackles of slavery”. In 2022, secret attempts were made to reintegrate the TTP. This backfired when the TTP demanded to govern the tribal territory.
The danger that Pakistan may be entangled in yet another great-power rivalry is real. And it calls for revisiting the Afghan policy and dispelling the perception of waging a war against the Afghan people. Before we unwittingly embrace it, we need to undertake an honest introspection, realise the gravity of the fault line and prevent the region from being pushed towards another Great Game from which no one will emerge a winner.
The writer, a life member of PAL and an author, is also a former senator.
