Afghanistan and Pakistan between proximity, strategic prudence and policy
Lt Gen Rizwan Akhtar (Retired)
Publishing date: 08 November 2025
Published in: The Nation
No nation chooses its neighbours. Geography, in its quiet permanence, dictates relationships that diplomacy must endlessly manage. For Pakistan, the 2,600-kilometer border with Afghanistan is both an inheritance and an ordeal, a line of contact, culture, and conflict that has shaped its security landscape for many decades.
Afghanistan and Pakistan remain bound by history, faith, and geography, yet divided by mistrust and competing narratives. For much of modern history, Pakistan has been Afghanistan’s lifeline, hosting millions of refugees, facilitating global engagement, and calling for humanitarian relief even when others turned away. Still, Kabul’s policies have repeatedly betrayed duplicity and hostility, leaving Pakistan to bear the economic, social, and security consequences of its neighbour’s instability.
The present moment demands reflection and recalibration. It is time for Islamabad to evolve from a posture of reaction to one of strategic prudence, balancing patience with firmness, compassion with control, and geography with statecraft.
Since 1979, Pakistan has stood as Afghanistan’s most steadfast supporter. When the Soviet invasion displaced millions, Pakistan opened its borders and homes. When the Taliban took over Kabul in 2021, Pakistan alone kept its diplomatic mission operational, facilitating evacuations and calling for the unfreezing of Afghan assets.
At every multilateral platform, the United Nations, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, and the Economic Cooperation Organisation, Pakistan advocated international assistance for the Afghan people. Yet, the gratitude that might have followed such commitment never materialized. Instead, Afghan soil continues to harbour Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) elements that attack Pakistani civilians and soldiers. The Taliban’s repeated pledges not to allow Afghan territory to be used for terrorism remain empty assurances.
Kabul’s denial is not ignorance; it is complicity. Verified intelligence shared by Pakistan, and corroborated by the 36th UN Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team Report (July 2025), confirms that Afghan provinces host training sites and sanctuaries for TTP and Al-Qaida fighters under Taliban oversight. The report explicitly highlights that TTP maintains around 6,000 militants and continues to receive logistical and financial support from within Afghanistan. Such inaction, or worse, tacit endorsement, turns ideological fraternity into strategic betrayal.
Pakistan’s generosity toward Afghanistan is unparalleled in modern history. For over four decades, Pakistan has hosted more than five million Afghan refugees, often without sustained international support. Afghan children studied in Pakistani schools, Afghan traders found access to ports and markets, and Afghan families received medical care and livelihoods across provinces. Yet, this humanitarian act has evolved into one of the most complex social and economic challenges facing Pakistan today. The strain on urban infrastructure, healthcare systems, and employment opportunities has been immense. Refugee settlements, though born out of necessity, have in some cases become conduits for undocumented migration, smuggling, and militant infiltration.
Coupled with the above, there is another, often overlooked dimension, the psychological and sociocultural reality of the Afghan refugee experience. For many Afghans, Pakistan represents something their homeland has not offered for decades: a life without the constant threat of conflict, access to education and opportunities for their children, a moderate Islamic environment, where faith coexists with social freedom and a sense of normalcy, community, and possibility. In contrast, the harsh rule of the Taliban, marked by ideological rigidity, restrictions on women, and limited economic opportunity, makes return not just undesirable but frightening. Why would a family that has lived in relative stability for years willingly return to a place where their daughters cannot attend school, their sons face militant recruitment, and their livelihoods are uncertain? This dilemma, part humanitarian, part existential, explains why repatriation efforts have faltered. The issue is not merely logistical; it is about a loss of faith in Afghanistan’s future under extremist governance. Pakistan, thus, finds itself in a paradox – hosting refugees out of compassion, yet bearing the consequences of a neighbour’s failure to govern humanely. Regulating refugee presence, therefore, is not hostility; it is sovereignty. Pakistan must balance compassion with control, ensuring dignified repatriation under UNHCR supervision while asserting its right to secure borders and social stability.
Afghanistan’s duplicity runs deep. While professing brotherhood, its leadership has repeatedly allowed anti-Pakistan elements to operate freely. Even more concerning is Kabul’s growing political and intelligence alignment with India, a country that has long sought to exploit Afghan instability to encircle Pakistan strategically. For decades, New Delhi has invested heavily in cultivating influence across Afghan factions, funding media narratives, and embedding operatives within aid and development missions.
The current regime, fractured by internal rivalries among the Kandahar, Kabul, and Khost factions, remains vulnerable to Indian manipulation, a reality that regional intelligence assessments, including those by Turkey and Iran, have noted with concern. India’s goal is very clear: to keep Pakistan engaged on its western front, diverting attention from the eastern border and economic stabilization efforts. Afghan leaders, blinded by historical grievances and ideological rigidity, fail to see that they are being used, not befriended. For Pakistan, therefore, the challenge is twofold: “containing terrorism” and “denying strategic space to India in Afghanistan”. Both require disciplined, prudent diplomacy and narrative control.
Pakistan has long pursued a policy of patience, engaging the Taliban through religious scholars, tribal jirgas, and official delegations. From Mufti Taqi Usmani’s 2022 peace mission to Kabul to Defence Minister Khawaja Asif’s 2023 security dialogue, Pakistan sought cooperation rather than confrontation. Yet, each initiative was met with deflection and denial. The surge in terrorist incidents since mid-2025 underscores the futility of expecting unilateral restraint. Pakistani security agencies have documented over 170 infiltration missions (called “Tashkils”) involving nearly 4,000 militants crossing from Afghan provinces into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. Many of these militants are Afghan nationals, indicating institutional complicity rather than mere oversight. The response must now shift from moral persuasion to measured deterrence. Pakistan’s right to defend its sovereignty and protect its citizens is absolute. Cross-border attacks emanating from Afghan soil will invite proportionate, targeted, and pre-emptive responses. The message has been clear: Pakistan’s patience is not weakness.
Pakistan’s fencing of the western border, one of the most ambitious security undertakings in its history, reflects the state’s resolve to secure its frontier. Yet, complete closure of this rugged and tribal terrain is impractical. Centuries of shared culture, kinship, and commerce cannot be sealed by barbed wire alone. The way forward lies in controlled permeability, a calibrated system that allows legitimate trade and transit while curbing infiltration. This requires biometric verification and surveillance systems at crossing points, joint regulation mechanisms under monitored frameworks, and economic incentives that transform border posts like Torkham and Chaman into structured trade corridors. Security cannot exist in isolation; it must be embedded in economic and administrative logic.
Pakistan must now clearly distinguish between core and peripheral interests in its Afghan policy. Core interests include securing borders and neutralizing cross-border terrorism, preventing Afghan soil from being used by TTP, BLA, or other hostile entities, countering Indian strategic ingress, and promoting economic connectivity that benefits Pakistan’s western provinces. Peripheral interests, such as emotional or ideological preferences for specific Afghan factions, must no longer dictate state policy.
Sentimentality has been Pakistan’s historical weakness; strategic discipline must replace it. The Afghan file should, henceforth, be handled with institutional coherence, linking all forms of trade facilitation, refugee policy, and diplomatic engagement to verifiable commitments on counterterrorism and border control.
Afghanistan’s stability is not a favour Pakistan grants; it is a necessity Pakistan requires as a must. However, stability cannot be built on illusions. A regime that shelters terrorists and permits external manipulation cannot claim sovereignty while exporting insecurity. Islamabad must, therefore, adopt a “Doctrine of Strategic Prudence” anchored in principles as: 1) Dialogue without dependence, that is to engage, but do not enable, 2) Regulation with compassion, to protect borders while ensuring humanitarian dignity, 3) Economic leverage, by using trade as an instrument of compliance, not concession, 4) Regional partnerships by revival of trilateral cooperation with China, Iran, and Central Asia on security and energy corridors and 5) Narrative control by reclaiming global discourse, while documenting Pakistan’s 40 years of humanitarian role and exposing Kabul’s duplicity. Prudence is not passivity; it is the art of asserting national interest without exhausting national strength.
Afghanistan will remain where it is, an unchangeable neighbour defined by proximity and paradox. For Pakistan, the challenge is not to alter geography, but to manage it with intelligence and endurance. History will not remember how loudly Pakistan protested, but how wisely it adapted. The measure of Islamabad’s strategic maturity lies in transforming a turbulent frontier into a manageable boundary, one defined not by conflict but by controlled coexistence.
In the end, Pakistan’s true strength will not be measured by the force of its response, but in the wisdom of its restraint. Managing Afghanistan requires not emotion, but evolution, not vengeance, but vision. And that is the essence of strategic prudence.