In a Major Rift, Pakistan Ramps Up Pressure on the Taliban

Tensions over anti-Pakistan TTP terrorist group, expulsion of Afghan refugees will have implications
for U.S. interests.
On November 8, in an unprecedented press conference, Pakistan’s caretaker Prime Minister Anwar
ul-Haq Kakar offered a blistering critique of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. He announced that
the Taliban leadership was supporting the anti-Pakistan insurgency of the Tehreek-e-Taliban
Pakistan (TTP) and that had contributed to a major increase in violence in Pakistan — leading to
2,867 Pakistani fatalities since the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021.

Over the last two years, the Pakistani government had been careful in its characterization of Taliban-
TTP ties despite evidence of the Taliban’s support to the TTP, popularly known as the Pakistani
Taliban, through provision of a safe haven and other forms of material assistance. This time, Kakar
broke from that diplomatic hedging, saying “in a few instances” there was “clear evidence of [the
Taliban] enabling terrorism” by the TTP. A few days after Kakar spoke, Pakistan’s special envoy for
Afghanistan, Asif Durrani, followed up on Kakar’s critique of the Taliban, noting that “peace in
Afghanistan, in fact, has become a nightmare for Pakistan.”
While Kakar is Pakistan’s “caretaker” prime minister until the country goes through an election (now
rescheduled for early next year), he is believed to be close to Pakistan’s military. His statement also
comes on the heels of Pakistan’s controversial decision to expel 1.7 million undocumented Afghan
refugees from Pakistan — with over 327,000 refugees having already been forced to return to
Afghanistan since the expulsion decision was announced. It was also preceded by significant attacks
by the TTP, including an audacious attempt at the land grab of a border district in northern Pakistan.
Thus, Kakar’s statement and its timing are significant. It indicates not just his views as the interim
leader of the country but also the latest policy turn led by the military that Pakistan has had enough
of the Taliban’s support for the TTP and wants to pressure the Taliban, at least until they revisit
support for the TTP.
Under the new policy, Pakistan has set in place a broader pressure campaign to coerce the Taliban
into reviewing and revoking its support for the TTP. Pakistan shares a long border with landlocked
Afghanistan; it also supported and provided safe haven to the Taliban for nearly 20 years, all of which
gives it unique leverage over the politics of Afghanistan. The main step to that end is Pakistan’s
expulsion of refugees, which Kakar admitted is meant to pressure the Taliban. The other significant
step Pakistan has taken is the scaling backing of economic and trade ties to impose economic pain
on the Taliban. Pakistan has also announced that it will “not advocate the Afghan Taliban’s case at
the international level,” which likely means Pakistan will not advocate for the formal recognition of
the Taliban-led government and downgrade engagement with the Taliban as it has consistently done
since August 2021.
The Taliban’s support for the TTP and Pakistan’s emerging pressure campaign sets the Taliban-
Pakistan relationship on a path of long-term deterioration.
Taliban’s Calculus on the TTP and Pakistan
The Taliban leadership has deflected on Pakistani concerns on the TTP, calling it Pakistan’s internal
problem. They have instead focused on the Pakistani decision to expel Afghan refugees — in recent
weeks, they have broken from relative restraint in their public posture on Pakistan. This has ranged
from a statement by the Taliban’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, expressing concern over
the treatment of Afghan refugees to Taliban Prime Minister Hassan Akhund calling on Pakistan’s
government and “military generals” to adhere to “Islamic principles.” Taliban Defense Minister
Mohammad Yaqub has warned Pakistan that it should be mindful of the “consequences” of its
decisions and that it will reap what it is sowing. Most significantly, Taliban Interior Minister
Sirajuddin Haqqani — a longstanding ally of Pakistan — has also condemned Pakistan, describing its
decision to expel refugees as “unIslamic.”
These statements by Taliban leaders partly reflect the depth of anger among Afghans and within the
Taliban over Pakistan’s expulsion of Afghan refugees. Taliban leaders also seem frustrated at
Pakistan’s mounting pressure on them and unwillingness to negotiate with and make concessions
to the TTP, in particular since the breakdown in Taliban-brokered talks between the TTP and Pakistan
in late 2022. Yet the convergence of leaders representing different factions and groups within the
Taliban on this issue is also instructive on Taliban internal politics, suggesting that they may be
increasingly on the same page when it comes to Pakistan.
Since their return to power in 2021, as argued by USIP senior expert Andrew Watkins, the Taliban
have indicated two distinct impulses: jihadism versus state-building. The jihadist camp champions
the cause of foreign fighters. To that end, it seeks to not only protect them inside Afghanistan but
also to support their jihadist campaigns. The state-builders have appeared more inward-focused,
seeking to limit the activities of foreign fighters to improve relations with regional and Western
countries for the end goal of stabilizing the country and economy. The push and pull between these
two factions contributed to the Taliban’s dual policy over the last two years of supporting the TTP
inside Afghanistan on the one hand and assurance to Pakistan on the other.
Over the last year, Taliban leaders with state-building instincts appear to have soured on Pakistan
and see Pakistan’s refugee expulsion as a conspiracy to undermine the Taliban government. There
are other grievances among state-builders toward Pakistan, including unmet expectations on
economic and trade issues as well as questions about the level of autonomy of a Taliban-led
government that Pakistan is willing to accept. Some are suggesting that Pakistan is bent on
weakening the Taliban to keep them pliant. There is a possibility that the Taliban state-builders may
be advocating use of hard-power leverage, perhaps through violence of the TTP, to counter
Pakistan’s purported attempts to weaken them and realize their state-building agenda. If so, the
divide between state-building and jihadism-inclined factions on the level of support for the TTP may
be shrinking.
Still, some Taliban leaders with a state-building bent will be nervous about a hostile relationship
with Pakistan. Irrespective of their public posturing, they are aware that Pakistan has made the more
significant contribution to the downfall of multiple Afghan governments over the last four decades.
Even if pragmatic leaders are overcome with anger for now, they will worry about the future of their
regime if Pakistan remains opposed to them — and may adjust their positions, even realign
themselves politically if hostilities persist.
What Next? Pakistan’s Options and Likelihood of Success
Pakistan appears to be ready to sustain and increase economic pressure to compel the Taliban to
review its support for the TTP. Pakistan’s economic leverage is rooted partly in being landlocked
Afghanistan’s main artery of transit trade and Taliban-led Afghanistan’s main export market —
accounting for over 50 percent of exports. Border crossings with Pakistan contribute more than 40
percent of Afghanistan’s customs revenues, which makes up nearly 60 percent of the Taliban’s total
revenues. Pakistan has already tightened rules for transit trade, imposed stringent bank guarantee
requirements on Afghan traders for imports, expanded a list of goods Afghanistan can’t import via
Pakistan and slapped a 10 percent duty (referred to as processing fees) on select commodities
imported by Afghanistan. Pakistan has also slowed down the movement of Afghanistan-bound
containers arriving at Pakistani ports, as per the Taliban. These measures will have some impact on
Pakistan’s economy, but it is far less reliant on the Afghan economy — at one point Pakistan was
importing a large volume of Afghan coal, but as international coal prices have dropped, Pakistan’s
coal imports from Afghanistan have decreased. Thus, overall, Pakistan’s measures will put more
significant pressure on an isolated Taliban regime by cutting into its revenues and trade volumes.
Pakistan retains other tools, like closure or disruption of border crossings to dry out Taliban
revenues, to exert more economic pain.
If economic pressure fails, an escalatory step, which Pakistan’s military hinted at recently, can be a
cross-border military action striking leaders and camps of the TTP in Afghanistan. The outcome of
such an action is not clear. There is deep anger in Afghanistan toward Pakistan. Pakistani military
action may increase support for the TTP in Afghanistan and also trigger retaliatory violence. Yet it is
possible that cross-border action forces the Taliban to revisit its position, at least tactically. There is
a precedent for this. In April 2022, Pakistan carried out cross-border airstrikes in eastern
Afghanistan, soon after which the TTP, presumably at the insistence of the Taliban, agreed to a
cease-fire against Pakistan.
Another more escalatory option for Pakistan is to support opposition to the Taliban, but it is not
clear if Pakistan can work with the Taliban’s fragmented opposition. The opposition, dominated by
political and military leaders of the former Afghan republic, has a history of poor ties with Pakistan,
partly due to Pakistan’s support for the Taliban during the years of the insurgency. Pakistan has also
struggled to forge ties with non-Pashtun political leaders — who are a key part of the Taliban’s
opposition. Nevertheless, the region has seen strange bedfellow alliances emerge before — and the
opposition is paying attention to the deterioration in Taliban-Pakistan ties and may be positioning
to improve relations with Pakistan. For its part, Pakistan has helped forge to balance against the
government in Kabul in the past — and given its geographic position, arguably, can be effective at
it.
Taliban’s Options and Likelihood of Success
The Taliban have some options ofopposition coalitions their own in a bid to blunt Pakistan’s pressure
campaign and compel Pakistan to make political space for the TTP. For one, the Taliban can seek to
improve ties with neighbors in Central Asia and Iran to weather economic pain and Pakistani
coercion. The Taliban have already reached out to Iran recently — with Taliban Deputy Prime
Minister Abdul Ghani Baradar making a trip seeking more port access and trade concessions from
Iran. Iranian access may help cushion the blow of losses from restricted transit trade with Pakistan,
but it is unclear if it can be a full replacement.
The Taliban may also seek to backchannel with Pakistan. In the past, amid moments of tension with
Pakistan, the Taliban have leaned on sympathetic Pakistani officials to de-escalate tensions. It is
possible that some Taliban leaders (such as those from the state-building camp) may seek such help
again. There are a handful of international actors as well who the Taliban can ask for help to de-
escalate. The country best positioned and most accessible to the Taliban to play the role of a third-
party mediator is Qatar, but it is unclear if the Qatari government, currently consumed by the Israel-
Hamas war in Gaza, has the bandwidth or even interest to mediate Pakistan-Taliban tensions. China
can also try to mediate, but it has security concerns of its own regarding Afghanistan-based terrorist
groups and may share Pakistan’s perspective on the rising insecurity in Pakistan.
Another option for the Taliban is to seek a thaw in ties with the Western world in general and the
United States in particular in a bid to open up bilateral trade and economic ties as well as gain
multilateral assistance. Taliban actions that are most likely to create greater Western openness to
normal ties are reversing the restrictions on girls’ education and on women’s employment, though
lesser actions like allowing women to work for nongovernmental organizations and the United
Nations may also open some doors. The Taliban can also look to play on Pakistani paranoia by
increasing engagement with Pakistan’s archrival India and offering India more diplomatic access in
the country in exchange for economic assistance.
Perhaps the most obvious option on the table which the Taliban may believe gives them sufficient
leverage is violence against Pakistan through proxies — a variant of a military strategy referred to
as “escalate to de-escalate.” The Taliban may be drawn to it due to their successful violence-driven
bargaining with the United States as an insurgency as well as Pakistan’s ongoing economic downturn
and domestic political turmoil. For this purpose, the Taliban can relax limits on actions and activities
of various militant allies against Pakistan. If so, the TTP will be the key ally for the Taliban — directly
and through its cover organization which undertakes complex militant attacks, the Tehreek-e-Jihad
Pakistan. The Taliban can also turn to other militant factions in Afghanistan with ongoing activity or
a history of violence in Pakistan, such as al-Qaeda in the Indian Sub-continent, Hafiz Gul Bahadur
group and Lashkar-e-Islam. The Taliban are also providing haven to separatist Baloch insurgents,
which plausibly gives the Taliban leverage over parts of Pakistan with significant Chinese interests.
Still, violence may not lead to the change the Taliban want to see in Pakistan’s behavior. As there is
no Pakistani domestic political constituency calling for negotiations with the TTP, it is unlikely more
attacks, even if they bring additional economic cost, will create pressure on Pakistani military
leadership to revive negotiations with TTP. If anything, it may spur Pakistan into exerting more
pressure on the Taliban.
Implications for U.S. Policies on Afghanistan and Pakistan
In an unusual turn of events, Pakistan has come to oppose the Taliban in a way that U.S.
policymakers worked for two decades of the U.S. war in Afghanistan to bring about but ultimately
failed. Taliban-Pakistan tensions will create feelings of schadenfreude within the U.S. policy
community, but also challenge long-standing policy models and assumptions on how the United
States should deal with both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In the near term, there are three main implications for U.S. interests regarding Pakistan’s pressure
campaign against the Taliban and the Taliban’s hardening on support for the TTP.
On the one hand, the shift in Pakistan’s policy improves the United States’ position to press the
Taliban on issues of concern, such as human rights, political inclusion and perhaps even
counterterrorism. A pressured Taliban regime’s pragmatic elements will see greater value in
economic and assistance opportunities through the Western world — and that may create
incentives for some Taliban leaders to offset Pakistan’s pressure by reconsidering U.S. demands and
taking them up with hardliners in the movement, like Akhundzada. U.S. policymakers can leverage
the Pakistani pressure to explore what the new trade space on human rights, political inclusion and
counterterrorism looks like with the Taliban. If policymakers believe more pressure can lead to
holistic change in the Taliban’s behavior, including that of hardline Taliban leaders, they can
coordinate with Pakistan to amplify the pressure, though policymakers will be skeptical of a long-
term convergence of interests with Pakistan over Afghanistan.
On the other hand, the Taliban’s strong support for the TTP despite Pakistan’s pressure suggests
that the TTP’s threat to Pakistan will continue to grow, even metastasize. Not only does that raise
concerns about risks to U.S. interests due to the TTP’s growing violence in Pakistan, for example by
adding to Pakistan’s fragility and nuclear security concerns, but it is also instructive on how enduring
the Taliban’s support for jihadist groups ultimately is. This points to the need for beefing up the U.S.
counterterrorism posture in the region.
At the same time, a competing priority for the Biden administration is mitigating the humanitarian
crisis in Afghanistan. Some policymakers may worry that Pakistan’s decision to put economic
pressure on the Taliban, especially at a time when international humanitarian assistance is going
down, will disturb the already precarious equilibrium of the Afghan economy and aggravate the
humanitarian situation — and they may seek to defuse Pakistan-Taliban tensions to save the Afghan
economy. However, chances of the United States changing Pakistan’s mind on the pressure
campaign are slim.
Beyond the immediate implications, the growing tensions also pose longer-term questions about
U.S. policy in the region should Pakistan sustain pressure against the Taliban. U.S. policymakers will
need to reckon with the implications of a weakened Taliban regime, including increased risks of
renewed conflict inside Afghanistan, and whether mitigating such risks is worth trying to limit
Pakistani pressure at some stage. While these questions are somewhat distant for now, the
trajectory of Taliban-Pakistan ties over the last two years and the history of Afghanistan suggests
they may come up sooner rather than later.