Aleena Yousuf
The fall of Kabul in 2021, left in its wake not just military hardware but a governance vacuum that was quickly filled by the Taliban and other terrorist organizations. Four years later that vacuum has deepened and become a structural crisis not just for the Afghans but beyond their borders.
Afghanistan did not become a terrorist hub overnight; its roots stretch back to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and the mujahideen proxy war of the 1980s. These jihadist networks were funded by the US and nurtured by Pakistan to bleed Soviet forces which resulted in withdrawal of the Soviet. However, the networks which were assembled to fight Soviet did not dissolve but evolve, the Arab fighters became the Al-Qaeda and thus, these militant groups found their own interests to continue the fight.
The return of the Taliban in 2021 confirmed the fears of the skeptics of the Doha Agreement that, the Taliban never intended to severe ties with Al-Qaeda and other militant groups. This was proved in 2022 when the Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al Zawahiri was killed in a strike on Kabul, who was said to be under the protection of Haqqani Network of the Afghan Taliban who has the command of the interior ministry of the emirate now. It highlighted that the Afghan Taliban were giving sanctuary and protecting several militants and their leaders in stark opposition of the promise they made in the agreement.
Today Afghan Taliban host multiple terror groups including, the ISKP (Islamic State Khorasan Province), the TTP (Tehreek e Taliban Pakistan), BLA (Baloch Liberation Army) and the Islamic Movements of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. ISKP has emerged as the most dangerous group, conducting mass casualties strikes against the Hazara community, attacking embassies of Iran and Russia and an attack on Moscow’s Crocus City Hall killing around 140 people. Similarly, the TTP conducts its cross-border operations in Pakistan from Afghanistan and has killed hundreds of military personnel and civilians since their rise post 2021. Likewise, the Islamic Movements seed instability in Central Asia from Afghan soil. The Baloch Liberation Army, which is a separatist ethno-nationalist militant group based in southwestern Pakistan has in the recent years joined hands with the TTP and are conducting converging operations, while sharing their training facilities in the Hilmand and Nimroz provinces of Afghanistan according to a January 2025, UNSC report. This emerging alliance despite their ideological and tactical differences has put Pakistan in a critical security challenge.
The Taliban government’s response to all of this has been often selective and symbolic. For instance, it has fought ISKP which is its ideological rival who see Taliban as insufficiently radical. Similarly, Kabul condemns terror attacks in Pakistani cities and ensures Pakistan it will act against any hostile party whenever Pakistan takes the issue to international forums or allies. On the other hand, it provides sanctuary and facilitates these terror groups which has resulted in closure of the Torkham Pass and subsequent Pakistani strikes along the border regions and Kabul. As a result of these recent cross border airstrikes in Khost and Kunar province many civilians have lost their lives, shattering what little trust remained between the two countries. Pakistan now faces an existential TTP-BLA insurgency launched from the very Afghan territory it once used as militant stagging ground.
Regional neighbors including China, Iran, and Central Asian republics are also alarmed but its high time they, together with Pakistan step up to address this issue. They need to pressure Kabul to abide by the Doha Agreement and not just try to coerce it but incentivize cooperation through economic engagement, because Kabul may lack military might for a direct confrontation, its guests can fight guerilla wars forever. The regional actors do not have to endorse the Taliban governance but engage with them as a pragmatic step to address the region’s pressing militancy problem.
On the other hand, the Taliban government needs to understand its economic vulnerability and lack of structural capacity which is further exacerbated by its geography as a land locked country. Historically, it has relied on Pakistan to access the global market for what little it had to export through port Qasim and for bilateral trade as well. Recently however, trade between the two countries has almost halted and in order to sustain itself economically and to avoid the kinetic strikes on its soil and thus for internal peace and stability for not just itself but the entire region, Afghan Taliban need to deal with its militancy challenge and reassure its neighbors that it will not allow use of its soil for hostilities against its neighbors.
Afghanistan’s security crises is not an impossible issue, but it cannot be solved by isolation or coercion. It has to be addressed by pressuring the Taliban to reform through responsible engagement and clear sighted, objective regional cooperation, while acknowledging that, the problem created by choices and decisions made in 1980s to 2000s is going to take at least a decade undoing.
The author is a PPE (Philosophy, Politics & Economics) student at the Aga Khan University Faculty of Arts and Sciences with an interest in geopolitics, current affairs and political economy.
