Islamabad, Pakistan, on September 13, when Shehbaz Sharif arrived at the military hospital in Bannu, in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, his stoic expression replaced unmistakable rage.
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.
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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.
He addressed the media outside the hospital, “Today I want to send a clear message to Afghanistan.” Choose one of two options. If they wish to establish relations with Pakistan with genuine goodwill, sincerity and honesty, we are ready for that. However, we won’t have any influence over the Afghan interim government if they choose to support terrorists.
However, the violence continued. 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. The provincial capital of Balochistan, Quetta, was the victim of a suicide bombing that blew up on September 30 and injured 32 people.
According to Islamabad-based think tank, the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies (PICSS), the death count in August was particularly high. The institute reported a 74 percent increase in violence in the country since , July.
According to the PICSS Militancy Database, August became the deadliest month in over a decade, surpassing all monthly figures since February 2014, according to the think tank’s report.
An already depressing picture has been made worse by the surge. 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. Civilians and security personnel are among the groups at risk, and most attacks have taken place in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.
Sharif was categorically blaming the rise in murders and violent acts. “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.
The TTP has been conducting armed campaigns against Islamabad since it first emerged in 2007 amid the US-led, so-called “war on terror.”
The organization calls for the reversal of the merger of Pakistan’s tribal regions with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, demands the release of its imprisoned members, and enacts strict Islamic law.
The Pakistani government insists the TTP – which is distinct from the Afghan Taliban but ideologically aligned in many respects – operates from Afghan territory. It attributes the organization’s use of the Arabic-derived term “khwarij,” a historical epithet for an extremist sect that labeled other Muslims as “apostates,” to being blamed on Kabul for allowing sanctuary and to using it repeatedly.
However, these accusations have been repeatedly refuted in Kabul. Last month, Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesperson for the Taliban government, warned against “provocative” statements and urged cooperation.
He said in a Kabul interview days after Sharif’s statements that Pakistan should take steps to stop these attacks. Islamabad should also share information with Kabul so that we can also work to thwart these threats, he continued.
Border tensions deepen
As a result of a lull earlier this year, high-level delegations from Pakistan visited Kabul and other meetings with Chinese leaders, suggesting that things might be moving forward.
Ishaq Dar, Pakistan’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister, made his first major visit to Kabul 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. China offered to expand its presence in the region and act as a mediator between Islamabad and Kabul at the third meeting held in Kabul in August.
The Afghan Taliban have, despite those diplomatic gestures, not taken any serious action against the TTP.
Iftikhar Firdous, cofounder of The Khorasan Diary, a portal that tracks regional security developments, was scathing in his comments. He told Al Jazeera, “In reality, there hasn’t been an Afghan Taliban’s overarching commitment to combat the TTP in Afghanistan, and this is probably never going to happen.”
He called the Afghan Taliban a “grey entity in a world where black and white are no longer distinguishable.”
“I don’t see any end to the TTP while the idea of the Taliban exists. The Pakistani government’s failure to establish a controlled Taliban government in Afghanistan has had negative effects, according to the Peshawar-based analyst. The next big mistake would be to assume that the Taliban’s internal security issues will be resolved by negotiation.
Diplomatic outreach falters
During its initial rule in the 1990s, Pakistan was viewed as a protector of the Afghan Taliban. As a defense against India, the Pakistani army sought “strategic depth” in Afghanistan. But the Taliban’s return to power in 2021 altered the dynamic.
While the TTP’s campaign has continued inside Pakistan, Kabul has occasionally cautiously courted ties with New Delhi.
Despite the obvious challenges, Afghani analyst Tameem Bahiss asserts that Pakistan’s long-term security depends on effective cooperation with Afghanistan both bilateral and multilateral.
“Kabul’s reluctance to act decisively against the TTP is rooted in both cultural and ideological considerations. He told Al Jazeera, “The Afghan Taliban are unlikely to use force against a group with whom they have ties not just culturally but also ideologically and historically,” he said.
TTP’s access to more advanced military equipment makes this a problem even more. The group has made use of night-vision devices, quadcopters and heavier weaponry reportedly left behind after international forces withdrew from Afghanistan.
“Deep scars”
The TTP has continued to recruit in Pakistan’s tribal districts, where decades of conflict have eroded support for the state, are more troubling, according to analysts.
Fahad Nabeel, who leads the Islamabad-based research consultancy Geopolitical Insights, said counterinsurgency is only successful in any region with local support.
Between the mid-1900s and the mid-1900s, the Pakistani military’s previous operations against armed groups caused displacement and economic damage, creating a culture of mistrust in the authorities.
Nabeel noted that there is a particular issue with the lack of coordination between the army and federal and provincial authorities.
“Political ownership of military operations is very important, which has been an issue encountered during the early military operations as well. He cited Sharif’s operation, which was announced in June 2024, but it never actually launched, and the recently announced Operation Azm-e-Istehkam, which quickly became contentious due to the lack of clarity surrounding the operation.
According to Bahiss, the tribal belt along the border has endured decades of trauma, with violence from 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, a threat to the nation
Pakistan and Afghanistan have been at odds with one another for many years, but recent actions by other nations, including the US, have complicated the regional dynamics even more.
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.
The foreign ministers of China, Iran, Pakistan, and Russia urged Afghanistan to take “effective, concrete, and verifiable actions” to end armed groups operating on its soil at a UN General Assembly (UNGA) side event in New York six days later.
They warned that the region was in danger of being exposed to ISIL, al-Qaeda, the TTP, and other organizations.
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 Taliban in Afghanistan, on the other hand, applauded this statement.
The Afghan Taliban’s top priority, according to Abdul Sayed, a researcher in Sweden’s security sector, is establishing a stable government.
“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.
In recent years, Pakistan has carried out numerous airstrikes against armed groups on Afghan soil, with the most recent instance being in December 2024, when at least 46 people died, mostly civilians.
Islamabad has also implemented an expulsions policy. Since November 2023, Pakistan has been pushing a three-phase campaign to deport millions of Afghans, citing security concerns. The tensions between Kabul and Kabul have grown, and the already fragile humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, which has been worsened by the most recent, devastating earthquake in its eastern region, has grown even more so.
Nabeel argued that Islamabad must work hard to win over regular Afghans while making it clear that anti-Pakistani armed groups cannot operate freely if they want to end the violence.
“Such an approach can allow Pakistan to conduct covert actions against anti-Pakistan militant groups in Afghanistan. However, such actions can only be successful if Pakistani authorities take actions on their own, not by staging cross-border strikes, to combat the structural causes of violence, he claimed.
However, according to Firdous, a security analyst based in Peshawar, there are likely to continue simmering tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan beyond a TTP-related crisis.
“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.
