Pakistan supported Afghan insurgents in the 1970s. Today it demands action against the TTP. The historical record complicates Islamabad’s argument without excusing attacks on Pakistani civilians.

The diplomats gathered in Moscow on 5 October 2026 could not agree on a joint statement. Pakistan wanted the regional consultations to address attacks originating from Afghan territory. The Taliban delegation objected to language repeatedly associating Afghanistan with terrorism. Russian envoy Zamir Kabulov acknowledged the disagreement.

Five decades earlier, Pakistani authorities were assisting Afghan Islamists who sought to overthrow President Mohammad Daoud Khan. Some trained or organised on Pakistani soil. The comparison is uncomfortable: Islamabad now demands that Kabul stop the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) from operating across the frontier. Yet the organisations, the governments and the legal circumstances are not identical. History should sharpen the question rather than supply an easy accusation of hypocrisy.

The dispute before the Soviet invasion

The frontier dispute began long before the current Taliban government. Afghanistan challenged the Durand Line, drawn under an 1893 agreement between British India and Afghanistan. After Pakistan’s independence in 1947, Afghan leaders supported demands associated with Pashtunistan. Relations deteriorated again when Mohammad Daoud Khan overthrew the monarchy in July 1973 and revived a more assertive policy on Pashtun nationalism.

Pakistan’s leaders had recently experienced the separation of East Pakistan in 1971. Support for ethnic movements near the western border consequently appeared particularly threatening. Daoud’s stance on Pashtun and Baloch nationalist politics helped shape Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s response. Islamabad cultivated Afghan Islamist opponents, including Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Burhanuddin Rabbani, whose opposition to Daoud could put pressure on Kabul without advancing Pashtunistan claims.

The policy was not merely a reaction to Soviet expansion. Pakistan was already trying to influence Afghanistan’s internal politics through selected armed opponents of its government. The strategic motive explains why officials made that choice. It does not settle whether the intervention was justified.

The failed Afghan uprising of 1975

The most instructive episode occurred in 1975. Afghan Islamist militants with bases and support in Pakistan attempted uprisings against Daoud. Accounts of the operation differ in some details, but historical research describes Pakistani assistance in training and preparing the insurgents. The rebels failed to attract the broad local support they needed. Afghan government forces suppressed the attempts, and surviving opposition figures regrouped.

The episode revealed an enduring problem for governments that sponsor foreign armed movements. Pakistan could provide refuge and resources. It could not manufacture a popular uprising inside Afghanistan, nor could it guarantee that its clients would pursue Islamabad’s objectives indefinitely. The failed revolt did not end these relationships. It helped establish networks that would later operate in a much larger war.

What the American intelligence record actually says

A declassified US intelligence assessment preserved in the State Department’s Foreign Relations of the United States collection describes Afghan exile organisations based in Pakistan and earlier Pakistani support for Hekmatyar’s activities against Daoud. This is important contemporaneous evidence, although intelligence assessments are not infallible and should not be treated as a complete history of the insurgency.

The record supports a limited conclusion: Pakistan assisted selected Afghan armed opponents before the Soviet invasion. It does not prove that Pakistan commanded the entire Afghan resistance. Many factions had their own constituencies and competing political ambitions. The distinction between providing support and exercising effective control matters throughout this history.

The Soviet war expanded the strategy

Afghanistan’s communist revolution in April 1978 and the Soviet invasion in December 1979 changed the scale of the conflict. Pakistan became a crucial base for anti-Soviet fighters. American and Saudi assistance flowed to Afghan mujahideen through channels in which Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate played a central role. Refugees, fighters and supply networks moved through frontier districts already linked to Afghanistan by family and commerce.

The war strengthened Pakistan’s ability to influence armed groups. It also encouraged an institutional habit: selecting Afghan partners as a way to shape the government across the border. After Soviet forces withdrew in February 1989, Afghanistan entered further conflict. Pakistan continued to seek influence among Afghan factions and later backed the Taliban’s rise to power. The Taliban captured Kabul in September 1996.

That relationship did not deliver everything Islamabad expected. The Taliban’s first government did not formally settle the Durand Line dispute on Pakistan’s terms. An ally could share religious or political sympathies while resisting Pakistan on questions of sovereignty. The gap between sponsorship and control had become plain.

How the TTP emerged decades later

The TTP is not the organisation Pakistan supported in 1975. It emerged in 2007 from Pakistani militant factions amid the upheaval following the US-led intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 and Pakistani military operations in the tribal areas. Its attacks targeted Pakistani security forces and civilians. The Afghan Taliban and the TTP remain separate organisations, despite historical ties and ideological overlap.

A direct causal line from Bhutto’s Afghan policy to the TTP would be misleading. The Soviet war, Afghanistan’s civil war, the Taliban’s first government, the post-2001 insurgency and the transformation of Pakistan’s frontier districts all intervened. The militant landscape changed repeatedly. Pakistan’s choices mattered, but so did Afghan political struggles and decisions by foreign powers.

A narrower institutional argument survives this complexity. Pakistani policymakers repeatedly treated armed Afghan organisations as tools for gaining influence. Such groups developed independent leadership, recruitment and sources of finance. Once violence spread and alliances changed, Pakistan could not simply switch off the networks or dictate their behaviour. The strategy carried risks that its immediate tactical successes concealed.

Afghanistan also intervened across the frontier

Afghanistan was not an innocent bystander in the 1970s. Kabul’s support for Pashtunistan and its dealings with movements opposed to Islamabad contributed to Pakistani fears. Bhutto’s government saw its assistance to Afghan Islamists partly as retaliation and partly as deterrence. Ignoring that background would turn a regional conflict into a morality play with one permanent aggressor.

Yet retaliation does not make every instrument of state policy acceptable. A government can accurately identify a security threat and still choose a response that deepens the conflict. The same analytical standard should apply to Kabul’s present conduct and Pakistan’s military responses.

What Pakistan can legitimately demand today

Pakistan has a serious security interest in preventing TTP attacks. UN Security Council Resolution 1373 requires states to prevent support for terrorism and deny safe haven to people involved in terrorist acts. A state’s earlier wrongdoing does not cancel its present rights, or the obligations of its neighbour.

Pakistan’s accusations nonetheless require evidence. Taliban officials deny sponsoring attacks against Pakistan and object to Pakistani airstrikes as violations of Afghan sovereignty. At the October Moscow meeting, Pakistani representative Mohammad Sadiq referred to more than 4,700 deaths over three years. That was part of Pakistan’s diplomatic presentation, not an independently verified count of deaths caused specifically by fighters operating from Afghanistan.

Cross-border military force raises separate legal questions. Even a genuine threat does not automatically make every strike lawful. The assessment depends on facts and disputed interpretations of the law governing force against non-state actors abroad. Civilian casualties deserve investigation regardless of the government’s stated motive.

What Moscow revealed, and what it could not resolve

Russia formally recognised the Taliban government in July 2025. Its relationship gives Moscow direct access to Afghan officials, but diplomatic access is not the same as leverage over every armed network. At the October 2026 consultations, Afghan objections to counterterrorism language prevented a common statement. Pakistan’s Foreign Office briefing treated the disagreement as a substantive security matter.

Kabulov said the Moscow Format was intended to coordinate regional cooperation, not adjudicate bilateral disputes. Russia expressed willingness to help if the governments requested assistance. No agreement emerged for verifying alleged TTP sanctuaries or investigating disputed attacks. A diplomatic conference can expose a disagreement without creating the machinery needed to resolve it.

A practical alternative to recurring accusations

A workable arrangement would require procedures, not only declarations. Pakistan could submit information about identified militant networks and suspected sites. Afghan authorities would need a credible process for assessing the allegations and documenting action. Both governments would need to agree how disputed incidents and civilian casualties would be investigated. Technical assistance from a mutually accepted third party could help, but neither Moscow nor Beijing could substitute for cooperation by Islamabad and Kabul.

The economic cost of repeated confrontation is visible at Torkham and Chaman, where unpredictable border restrictions affect transport operators and traders. A functioning security mechanism could improve commercial confidence. Reopening a crossing after a crisis is not the same as making trade predictable over time.

The policy lesson Islamabad cannot avoid

Pakistan’s involvement in the 1975 Afghan uprising preceded the Soviet invasion and reflected a conscious attempt to influence a neighbouring government through armed opponents. Later wars greatly expanded the networks and altered their purposes. That history does not mean Pakistan created the TTP. It shows why governments that rely on armed proxies may struggle to contain the longer-term consequences.

Pakistan can demand that Afghan territory not be used to organise attacks on its citizens. Kabul cannot dismiss that demand by citing Pakistan’s earlier intervention. But Islamabad’s position would be more consistent if it rejected armed cross-border proxies as an instrument of policy in every direction, not only when Pakistan is the target. The question left after Moscow is whether the two governments can turn that principle into verifiable commitments. Their history gives ample reason to doubt that another statement, by itself, will be enough.

Related analysis: Pakistan’s Western Frontier Is Becoming a Strategic Problem.

Documentary sources and further reading

• US State Department, declassified intelligence assessment of Afghan exile organisations
• US government historical study of Afghan militancy and the 1975 uprising
• Historical background on Pakistan–Afghanistan relations
• Pakistan Foreign Office briefing, 9 October 2026
• Associated Press reporting on the Moscow consultations