Islamabad, Pakistan – When Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif arrived at the military hospital in Bannu in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, on September 13, his stoic expression gave way to unmistakable anger.
At least 19 soldiers had died fighting attackers from the armed group, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) – commonly known as the Pakistan Taliban – in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a province that shares a long and contentious border with Afghanistan.
Flanked by army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir to his left, Sharif delivered a blunt message to the Afghan Taliban, which returned to power in Kabul after the withdrawal of US forces in August 2021, and which he accuses of providing a haven to armed fighters on Afghan soil.
“Today I want to send a clear message to Afghanistan,” he said while speaking to the media outside the hospital. “Choose one of two paths. If they wish to establish relations with Pakistan with genuine goodwill, sincerity and honesty, we are ready for that. But if they choose to side with terrorists and support them, then we will have nothing to do with the Afghan interim government.”
But the violence did not stop. Five more soldiers were killed when an improvised explosive device struck their vehicle on September 16 in the southwestern province of Balochistan, which also borders Afghanistan. Then, on September 30, a suicide bomb ripped through Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan, killing at least 10 people and wounding 32.
The death count in August was particularly high, according to Islamabad-based think tank, the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies (PICSS). The institute reported a 74 percent increase in violence in the country since July.
“With 143 militant attacks recorded, August became the deadliest month in over a decade, surpassing all monthly figures since February 2014, as per the PICSS Militancy Database,” the think tank’s report said.
The surge has compounded an already bleak picture. The year 2024 was one of the deadliest for Pakistan in nearly a decade, with more than 2,500 casualties of violence in the country recorded. Those targeted by armed groups include civilians and security personnel, and the majority of attacks have taken place in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.
Sharif was categorical in assigning blame for the rising violence and killings. “Terrorists come from Afghanistan and, together with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), these khawarij join forces to martyr our soldiers, our brothers and sisters, and ordinary citizens,” he said at the hospital.
Emerging in 2007 amid the United States-led, so-called “war on terror”, the TTP has long waged an armed campaign against Islamabad.
The group wants to implement strict Islamic law, has demanded the release of its imprisoned members, and calls for a reversal of the merger of Pakistan’s tribal areas with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The Pakistani government insists the TTP – which is distinct from the Afghan Taliban but ideologically aligned in many respects – operates from Afghan territory. It blames Kabul for allowing sanctuary and has repeatedly described the group using the Arabic-derived term “khwarij”, a historical epithet for an extremist sect that branded other Muslims as “apostates”.
Kabul, however, has repeatedly rejected these allegations. Last month, Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesperson for the Taliban government, warned against “provocative” statements and urged cooperation.
“Pakistan should take steps to foil such attacks”, he said during an interview in Kabul days after Sharif’s statements. “Islamabad should also share information with Kabul so that we can make efforts to counter these threats as well,” he added.
Border tensions deepen
The recent spike in violence followed a lull earlier in the year, while high-level delegations from Pakistan visited Kabul and other meetings with Chinese leaders took place, indicating that progress might be on the cards.
In April, Pakistan’s foreign minister and deputy prime minister, Ishaq Dar, travelled to Kabul, the first major visit by a senior Pakistani official since February 2023.
Then, in May, Dar joined his Chinese and Afghan counterparts, Wang Yi and Amir Khan Mutaqqi, for an informal trilateral meeting in Beijing that aimed to renew diplomatic engagement. The three ministers met again in August in Kabul, with China offering to expand its footprint in the region and to mediate between Islamabad and Kabul.
Yet those diplomatic gestures have produced little concrete action from the Afghan Taliban against the TTP.
Iftikhar Firdous, cofounder of The Khorasan Diary, a portal that tracks regional security developments, was scathing in his comments. “In reality, there has been no overarching commitment by the Afghan Taliban to act against the TTP in Afghanistan, and this is likely to never happen,” he told Al Jazeera.
He described the Afghan Taliban as a “grey entity in a world that no longer differentiates between black and white”.
“I don’t see any end to the TTP while the idea of the Taliban exists. Pakistan’s failed calculus to have a controlled Taliban government in Afghanistan has had detrimental consequences, and the next biggest mistake would be to expect that its internal security challenges will disappear by negotiating with the Taliban,” the Peshawar-based analyst said.
Diplomatic outreach falters
Pakistan was viewed as a patron of the Afghan Taliban during its first rule in the 1990s. The Pakistani army pursued a strategy that sought “strategic depth” in Afghanistan as a hedge against India. But the Taliban’s return to power in 2021 altered the dynamic.
This time around, Kabul has cautiously courted ties with New Delhi at times, while the TTP’s campaign inside Pakistan has continued.
Kabul-based analyst Tameem Bahiss argues that Pakistan’s long-term security rests on constructive engagement with Afghanistan through both bilateral and multilateral channels, despite the obvious obstacles.
“Kabul’s reluctance to act decisively against the TTP is rooted in both cultural and ideological considerations. The Afghan Taliban are unlikely to employ heavy-handed measures against a group with whom they have not just cultural but ideological and historical ties,” he told Al Jazeera.
A complicating factor is TTP’s access to more sophisticated military kit. The group has made use of night-vision devices, quadcopters and heavier weaponry reportedly left behind after international forces withdrew from Afghanistan.
‘Deep scars’
More troubling, analysts say, is that the TTP has continued to recruit inside Pakistan’s tribal districts, where decades of conflict have eroded support for the state.
Fahad Nabeel, who leads the Islamabad-based research consultancy Geopolitical Insights, said counterinsurgency is only successful in any region with local support.
Previous operations by the Pakistani military against armed groups between the mid-2000s and the mid-2010s triggered the displacement of people and economic damage, creating an environment of mistrust towards the authorities.
A lack of coordination between federal and provincial authorities and the army has also been a particular issue, Nabeel said.
“Political ownership of military operations is very important, which has been an issue encountered during the early military operations as well. A case in point is the recently announced Operation Azm-e-Istehkam, which soon became controversial due to the lack of clarity regarding the operation,” he said, referring to an operation announced in June 2024 by Sharif, which was never formally launched.
The tribal belt along the border has endured two decades of trauma, said Bahiss – from US drone strikes in the mid-2000s to early 2010s to violence by armed groups and repeated Pakistani military operations – leaving “deep scars and fostering resentment toward both the Pakistani state, and particularly the security establishment”.
“These grievances have provided fertile ground for the TTP’s revival, as the group has increasingly framed its narrative around Pashtun disenfranchisement,” the analyst said.
Local grievances, national threat
While Pakistan and Afghanistan have been engaged in a simmering conflict for many years, recent actions by other countries, including the US, have made the regional dynamic even more complicated.
On September 18, during a visit to the United Kingdom, US President Donald Trump suggested Washington wishes to regain control of Bagram airbase, a strategic facility outside Kabul that was long a linchpin for foreign military operations in Afghanistan.
Six days later, at a United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) side event in New York, the foreign ministers of China, Iran, Pakistan and Russia urged Afghanistan to take “effective, concrete, and verifiable actions” to dismantle armed groups operating from its soil.
They warned that ISIL, al-Qaeda, the TTP and several others posed a “serious threat” to the region.
Crucially, the resulting four-country statement – part of a quadripartite process that began in 2017 – also opposed “the reestablishment of military bases” such as Bagram in and around Afghanistan by “the countries responsible for the current situation”, language understood as aimed at the US. The Afghan Taliban, for its part, welcomed this statement.
Abdul Sayed, a security researcher in Sweden, said the Afghan Taliban’s primary priority is consolidating governance in its own country.
“But a further expansion of Pakistan’s policy of cross-border strikes or the adoption of more punitive measures against the Taliban and the Afghan population are likely to generate increased support for hostile actors, which could risk intensifying the threat of militancy within Pakistan,” he told Al Jazeera.
Pakistan has conducted multiple air strikes against armed groups on Afghan soil in recent years, with the last such incident taking place in December 2024, in which at least 46 people were killed, mostly civilians.
Islamabad has also pursued a policy of expulsions. Since November 2023, Pakistan has been pushing a three-phase campaign to deport millions of Afghans, citing security concerns. That drive has further heightened tensions with Kabul and added pressure to an already fragile humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, which has been compounded by the recent devastating earthquake in its eastern region.
Nabeel said Islamabad will have to try to build goodwill with ordinary Afghans while making it clear that anti-Pakistan armed groups cannot operate freely, if they have a hope of eradicating the violence.
“Such an approach can allow Pakistan to conduct covert actions against anti-Pakistan militant groups in Afghanistan. However, such activities can only prove to be meaningful if Pakistani authorities undertake actions on Pakistani soil [rather than engaging in cross-border strikes] to discourage the structural factors of violence,” he said.
For Firdous, the Peshawar-based security analyst, however, simmering tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan will likely persist beyond any resolution to the current crisis around TTP.
“There are perennial problems between the two neighbours which have more to do with existential issues for both countries, and cross-border terrorism happens to be an unresolved variable from the baggage of history,” he said.
Afghanistan Peace Campaign
