Can Islamabad fight the TTP without turning Afghanistan into a permanent adversary?

For most of my life in Pakistan, when we talked about a dangerous border, we usually looked east.

India occupied that space in our political imagination. Wars and Kashmir shaped it. Military deployments reinforced it. Afghanistan was difficult too, sometimes violently so, but it occupied a different place in Pakistan’s security thinking.

I am no longer sure that distinction works.

On October 1, Pakistani airstrikes hit Afghanistan’s Kunar and Helmand provinces. Islamabad said it had acted on intelligence about militant hideouts and killed 22 militants. Afghanistan’s Taliban government disputed Pakistan’s account. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan confirmed that at least 10 civilians were killed, most of them children, and nine were injured. Pakistan’s claim about the militants killed has not been independently verified.

The incident should not be treated as another isolated exchange along a troubled frontier. Pakistan has reached a more difficult point in its relationship with Afghanistan.

It has a real security problem involving militants operating across the border. At the same time, repeated military action inside Afghanistan risks creating something Pakistan has spent decades trying to avoid: sustained hostility on its western frontier.

The question is no longer simply whether Pakistan can hit TTP targets. It is whether those operations can produce greater security without making Afghanistan itself a long-term strategic adversary.

The Taliban’s return did not produce the security Pakistan expected

When the Taliban returned to Kabul in August 2021, some Pakistanis expected relations with Afghanistan to become easier to manage. Pakistan had maintained contacts with the Taliban through years of war and negotiations. Islamabad also possessed economic leverage because Afghanistan depended heavily on Pakistani ports and transit routes.

Yet the security relationship moved in the opposite direction.

The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan remained active. Attacks inside Pakistan continued, while Islamabad increasingly accused Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities of allowing TTP fighters to operate from Afghan territory.

Kabul rejects that accusation. Taliban officials say they do not allow Afghan territory to be used against neighbouring states and argue that Pakistan must deal with its own internal security problems.

Independent reporting, however, makes it difficult to dismiss Pakistan’s concern about the TTP presence. United Nations reporting has repeatedly identified the TTP as a major militant organisation operating in Afghanistan. Pakistan has put its strength at around 6,000 fighters in statements at the UN. The UN Security Council’s sanctions-monitoring machinery continues to examine militant organisations operating in Afghanistan.

Pakistan therefore has grounds to demand that Afghan territory not provide sanctuary for people organising attacks across the border. But recognising the threat does not answer the harder policy question: how should Pakistan respond when Kabul either cannot or will not satisfy Islamabad’s demands?

Increasingly, the answer has included force. That marks a striking reversal in the relationship.

For years, Islamabad rejected accusations that militants using Pakistani territory were destabilising Afghanistan. Pakistan argued, correctly, that it too had suffered enormous casualties from terrorism and that the regional militant landscape was more complicated than accusations against one state suggested.

Pakistan now makes a similar complaint about Afghanistan. Militants are based across the border, Islamabad says. They attack our soldiers and civilians. The government controlling that territory must stop them.

The geography has reversed. The sanctuary argument has not.

The frontier is becoming an economic barrier too

Military tension has already changed life along the border.

Pakistan suspended routine trade through major crossings during the confrontation that began in October 2025. Torkham, the most important gateway between Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan, has suffered prolonged disruption.

The economic consequences are visible. Pakistan-Afghanistan transit trade fell to 11,592 containers worth about $367 million in the 2025-26 fiscal year, according to figures reported by Dawn. Before the Taliban returned to power, annual transit traffic had approached 89,000 containers worth roughly $5 billion.

The border closure did not cause the entire decline. Afghanistan had already begun shifting commerce towards Iran and Central Asian routes. Pakistani restrictions accelerated a change that was under way.

That distinction matters because Pakistan may be losing more than trade during this confrontation.

For decades, geography gave Islamabad economic leverage over landlocked Afghanistan. Karachi’s ports formed an important part of Afghanistan’s connection to international markets. Pakistani roads carried Afghan transit cargo north towards the border.

Afghanistan is now learning to depend less on that route. From Karachi, that part of the story catches my attention. A security policy designed to pressure Kabul may eventually reduce one of Pakistan’s own sources of influence over Afghanistan.

Border communities pay a more immediate price. Traders around Landi Kotal have reported severe losses since normal commercial activity through Torkham was disrupted. Transporters lost work. Goods remained stranded. Local businesses that depended on traffic across the frontier saw customers disappear.

Pakistan may judge such restrictions necessary. That is a legitimate security decision for a state facing militant attacks. But economic pressure has strategic consequences. If Afghanistan develops alternative trade routes and Pakistani border communities lose their commercial connection with Afghan markets, restoring the old relationship later becomes harder.

Civilian casualties change the calculation

The October 1 strikes introduced another problem.

Pakistan said the operation targeted militant facilities. The Taliban government said civilians had been killed. UNAMA subsequently confirmed at least 10 civilian deaths, most of them children, along with nine people injured.

The UN findings do not establish that Pakistan deliberately targeted civilians. They do establish that civilians died.

Nor was October 1 the first such episode this year. UNAMA reported that strikes in Paktya, Paktika and Kunar on June 28 killed at least 28 civilians and injured 49. Pakistan’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting confirmed at the time that Pakistani security forces had carried out strikes in those provinces.

On September 21, UNAMA recorded another three civilian deaths and four injuries in an airstrike in Kunar. By October 1, the UN mission said it had documented more than 1,100 civilian deaths and injuries in Afghanistan during 2026 from cross-border armed violence.

Those numbers complicate any assessment based solely on how many militant positions were destroyed.

Pakistan has the right to protect its citizens from armed groups attacking from across the frontier. It also has to consider what repeated civilian deaths do to Afghan attitudes towards Pakistan.

A military operation can disrupt a militant network today while producing political costs that last much longer. That is not an argument for ignoring the TTP. It is an argument for measuring success more carefully.

The useful question after an airstrike is not only whether the intended target was hit. Islamabad also has to ask whether the operation has moved Pakistan closer to a safer western frontier. Those are not necessarily the same test.

China may be Pakistan’s most useful diplomatic channel

Pakistan and Afghanistan have not stopped talking completely. China has become particularly important.

Senior Pakistani and Afghan officials held informal talks in Urumqi in April 2026 with Chinese involvement. Pakistan later publicly welcomed Beijing’s role in providing a platform for communication.

A Pakistan-China joint statement issued on May 26 specifically addressed the security issue. Both governments said territory should not be used by organisations including the TTP and the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement to threaten regional security. Pakistan’s Foreign Office has since said that it continues to cooperate with Beijing over Afghanistan.

China has its own reasons for becoming involved. Beijing worries about militant organisations that threaten Chinese interests. It also has investments and broader economic ambitions that depend on a reasonably stable region.

More importantly for Pakistan, China can talk seriously to both sides. That does not mean Beijing can impose a settlement.

Pakistan says it wants written and verifiable assurances that Afghan territory will not be used for attacks against it. Kabul insists that it does not permit such activity. The gap between those positions has survived several rounds of diplomacy.

Still, the Urumqi process points towards the kind of policy Pakistan needs. Military pressure may remain one component. It cannot become the whole strategy.

Pakistan needs some mechanism through which Afghan action against the TTP can be measured. Kabul, in return, will want guarantees about Pakistani strikes and respect for Afghan sovereignty. China may be able to help build such a mechanism because both governments have reasons to preserve their relationships with Beijing.

It will be slow work. The alternative looks worse.

Pakistan still has to live with Afghanistan

Sitting in Karachi, Kunar feels very far away. The distance can mislead us.

Afghanistan shares more than 2,600 kilometres of frontier with Pakistan. Governments in Kabul will change. Militant organisations may split or disappear. Trade routes can shift. The border will remain.

Pakistan also cannot forget what lies to its east. India continues to dominate Pakistani conventional military planning and remains central to the country’s nuclear deterrence strategy. Calling the present situation a “two-front war” would exaggerate it. Pakistan is not fighting simultaneous conventional wars against India and Afghanistan.

Something subtler is happening. Pakistan increasingly has to devote military attention, diplomatic effort and economic resources to a western frontier that it once hoped would become more manageable after the Taliban returned to Kabul.

That is the strategic change worth watching.

Pakistan cannot accept armed groups using Afghan territory to kill Pakistani citizens. No government in Islamabad could reasonably adopt such a policy.

Yet Pakistan also cannot choose another Afghanistan.

Repeated airstrikes may kill militants. Border closures may impose costs on Kabul. Neither policy by itself explains how Pakistan reaches the political situation it actually needs: an Afghan government willing and able to prevent armed groups from using its territory against Pakistan.

The October 1 strikes therefore leave Islamabad with a question that will survive long after the immediate casualty figures disappear from the news.

Pakistan knows what it wants to destroy across the border.

It still needs a workable plan for the relationship it wants to build there.

Historical context: For a closer examination of Pakistan’s support for Afghan insurgents in the 1970s and the limits of proxy warfare, read Pakistan Once Backed Afghan Insurgents. Can It Now Demand an End to Cross-Border Militancy?