By Fidel Rahmati

The deafening roar of rocket launchers and mortar explosions shattered the tranquillity of Kurram, a Pakistani district of majestic peaks, ancient maple forests and fertile fields bordering Afghanistan. People huddled in makeshift bunkers, exchanging desperate volleys as their villages became battlegrounds.

For months, Sunni and Shiite Muslims in the area have been fighting intermittently over land disputes, the latest flare-up in a conflict that has simmered for decades, paralleling two wars in Afghanistan and the rise of terrorist groups in the region.

At least 16 people were killed in clashes on Oct. 12, including an ambush on a convoy that was under paramilitary protection. Since then, warring tribes have blocked roads, causing shortages of food and medicine, residents said. In September, fighting between members of the two communities left 46 people dead; a weeklong battle in July claimed nearly 50 lives.

“It is like a war between two countries, not a dispute between tribes,” said Hussain Ali, 26, a university student from Parachinar, Kurram’s main city. “Innocent people are suffering, and the government doesn’t care.”

Pakistan is mostly Sunni, but Shiites make up about 45 percent of Kurram’s 800,000 people, and they dominate Parachinar.

Mr. Ali, the university student, is from the Turi, the only tribe among the Pashtun, Pakistan’s second-largest ethnic group, that is wholly Shiite. The overwhelming majority of Pashtuns in Pakistan and Afghanistan are Sunni.

Shiites and Sunnis have often clashed over the use of agricultural land and forests in Kurram. Much of the land in some bordering districts is communally owned, with no formal records in existence. But ownership of the land in Kurram was partially documented during the British colonial era, and the inconclusive nature of those records has helped to fuel the long-running conflict, according to local elders.

Last year, at least 25 people were killed in a clash over land in Kurram. In a gruesome separate incident, seven Shiite teachers were murdered in a school.

“The administration’s failure to prevent a simple land dispute from escalating into sectarian violence is disgraceful,” said Hameed Hussain, a member of Parliament from Kurram who organized a peace protest in Parachinar.

“When disputes arise, troublemakers spread propaganda through mosque announcements to incite violence along sectarian lines,” he said.

The threat of violence is so ingrained that self-defense has become a way of life. Many people in Kurram learn to use heavy weapons from a young age.

Kurram, sometimes called the Parrot’s Beak because of how it extends into Afghanistan, borders the Afghan provinces of Khost, Paktika and Nangarhar. Parachinar is just 62 miles from Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital.

Shiites and Sunnis in Kurram lived largely in harmony for centuries, despite occasional violence. But the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and Iran’s Shiite revolution in 1979 dramatically altered the landscape.

“These events eroded traditional cultural values, fractured once-unified tribes along sectarian and socioeconomic lines, and heightened tensions in Kurram,” said Noreen Naseer, a political science professor at the University of Peshawar.

Kurram’s demographic and sectarian balance changed significantly in the 1980s with an influx of Sunni Afghan refugees and the establishment of mujahedeen groups, backed by Pakistan and the United States to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.

“It was a time when Afghan mujahedeen introduced a militant brand of Sunni Islam, while the Shiite population was also being radicalized by the Iranian revolution,” said Dr. Noreen, who is from Kurram.

This led to escalating tensions, resulting in two major episodes of violence in the 1980s that left dozens of people, mostly Shiites, dead. Shiites were forced to flee from the Sunni-dominated town of Sadda to Parachinar.

As the Taliban rose in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s, they provided arms and manpower to their fellow Sunnis in Kurram, fueling more clashes that left hundreds dead.

The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 introduced a new dynamic. Pakistani Sunnis in areas near Kurram harbored fleeing Taliban and Qaeda militants, but the Shiites of Kurram did not, which earned them the enmity of those groups.

In 2005, Pakistan expelled Afghan refugees from Kurram, generating fears among Sunnis of a restored Shiite dominance. That sparked bloody clashes beginning in April 2007 that led to the expulsion of Sunnis from Parachinar.

In early 2008, the arrival of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or T.T.P., a militant umbrella group formed in nearby tribal districts, further deepened the sectarian violence. A 45-day gun battle devastated Kurram. Hundreds of Shiites and Sunnis, along with Pakistani Taliban militants, were killed, and several villages were burned.

Shiite leaders claimed that the T.T.P. wanted to take control of Parachinar because the Shiites would not let them use their land to attack American troops in Afghanistan. “In fact, T.T.P.’s brutalities united the Shiite tribesmen, enabling them to mount organized resistance,” said Niyaz Muhammad Karbalai, a community elder in Parachinar.

A peace agreement in 2011 finally ended nearly four years of incessant warfare, after almost 2,000 deaths. But sporadic violence persisted.

The conflict in Kurram intensified further with the return of young Shiite residents who had fought in Syria’s civil war to support Bashar al-Assad’s government and protect Shiite shrines from Islamic State bombings.

Since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 2021, tribes in Kurram have obtained advanced American weapons left behind by Afghan troops, which has contributed to the violence.

The decades of strife are deeply etched into the collective memory of Kurram’s people.

“The violence, particularly the wave that began in 2007, has transformed local land disputes into full-scale sectarian clashes, widening the gap between Shiites and Sunnis,” said Mr. Chamkani, the farmer. “I am skeptical that people from the two sects in Kurram will be able to coexist peacefully anytime soon.”

For most of the three years since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, their erasure of women’s rights appeared to be setting them on course for near-total isolation in the world.

Western and Islamic countries alike condemned the group’s most extreme strictures, particularly on girls’ education. Messages by Taliban officials that their government was eager to engage with the world were ignored. To this day, no country officially recognizes the Taliban as the lawful authorities in Afghanistan.

But in recent months, the political winds have begun to shift in the Taliban’s favor.

Dozens of countries have welcomed Taliban diplomats. Some have sent high-ranking officials to Kabul to build diplomatic ties and secure trade and investment deals. Taliban officials have won temporary reprieves from travel bans. There has even been talk of removing the group from international terrorist lists.

The diplomatic activity reflects a subtle but significant shift toward normalizing the Taliban as political leaders and away from treating them as insurgents. It also reflects a growing consensus among world leaders that the Taliban government is here to stay.

In January, China became the first country to formally welcome a Taliban diplomat as Afghanistan’s ambassador — a title typically reserved for envoys whose countries are formally recognized on the world stage. The United Arab Emirates followed suit in August.

Many experts saw the moves as paving the way for the Taliban’s government to earn formal recognition eventually from the two countries.

Also in August, Uzbekistan sent its prime minister to Kabul, the highest-level foreign visit to Afghanistan since the Taliban seized power. The Russian Foreign Ministry announced this spring that the Kremlin was considering removing the Taliban from its list of designated terrorist organizations, which would make it the first country to do so.

Taliban officials have scored victories in another contested political battleground too: Afghanistan’s diplomatic missions around the globe. After the U.S.-backed Afghan government collapsed in 2021, its diplomats still ran the country’s embassies and consulates — and often lobbied their host countries for policies opposed by the Taliban.

But last month, the Taliban’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that about 40 Afghan embassies and consulates now answered to its government. Control over those diplomatic missions signals the Taliban government’s authority in Afghanistan and gives the group a voice in countries where many top Taliban leaders cannot visit because of international travel bans.

What about the West?

Western countries have led the charge in denouncing the Taliban’s treatment of women, hoping to pressure the group into reversing some of its most contentious policies.

American officials have stuck to their hard and fast red lines on women’s rights, emphasizing that the United States will not lift sanctions or remove Taliban officials from its blacklists until the restrictions are eased.

But the United States has become an outlier. As Taliban officials have made clear that they will not bow to outside pressure, more European leaders and international organizations have appeared to accept the limits of their influence and engage on issues where they can find common ground.

In recent months, Afghan embassies and consulates across Europe have faced increased pressure from their host countries to answer to the Taliban government, according to three officials with knowledge of the deliberations.

The Afghan Embassies in Britain and Norway opted to close last month. The ambassador to Britain, who had been appointed by the old U.S.-backed Afghan government, said in a statement that the embassy was shutting down “at the official request of the host country.”

Leaders of European countries are motivated to engage with the Taliban by two fears: that waves of Afghan migrants will enter Europe if there is turmoil in Afghanistan, and that terrorism could emanate from Afghanistan and reach Europe.

What does this mean for Afghanistan?

The growing diplomatic acceptance has created trade and investment opportunities — injections of cash that have been badly needed since the U.S.-backed government collapsed.

Over the past year, the Taliban have issued dozens of contracts to tap into the country’s mineral wealth. Private companies from the region have also scored deals to build infrastructure across Afghanistan — a link between Central and South Asian trade routes — that could help revive its economy and score points for the Taliban among the public.

The new diplomatic embrace has also eased the pressure to roll back the restrictions on women — a victory for the Taliban, but a major blow for many Afghan women.

Najim Rahim contributed reporting.