View of the Afghan capital city
Russia’s latest decision to officially accept the Taliban as a legitimate Afghan state marks a tectonic shift in regional geopolitics. While Moscow might regard it as a pragmatic re-alignment to protect its interests in Central Asia, the omens for Pakistan are far darker. With Islamabad embroiled in a fresh round of terrorism being engineered by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Russia’s support for the Taliban would serve only to give extremist players a boost and enable weak trends of security in all of South Asia to give way. For Pakistan itself, the Taliban coming back to power in Kabul has given it no strategic depth or cooperative border management it might have otherwise enjoyed before.
It has instead seen a spurt in cross-border terrorism. The TTP, inspired by the successes of their ideological allies in Afghanistan, has itself escalated the level of attacks within Pakistan—against civilians, security personnel, and strategic installations. Islamabad’s repeated diplomatic attempts notwithstanding, its pleas for the Taliban to rein in the TTP have gone largely unheeded. The Taliban protests the hosting of these combatants, but patterns of operations reveal otherwise: combatants move into Pakistan with impunity, attack, and come back unscathed back over the Durand Line into Afghan strongholds. That is where Russian support for the Taliban becomes so problematic.
For Moscow, the justification seems to be about defending its southern border, curbing ISIS-K expansion, and filling in the drug trade. In doing so, however, by acknowledging the Taliban government short of demanding hardline counter-terror assurances, Russia risks legitimizing a government that has repeatedly failed—if not refused—to stop extremist elements from destabilizing its neighbors. The Taliban double game—Kabul rule and acceptance of jihadist sanctuaries—is unrestrained. This is more than a diplomatic slap to Pakistan; it’s a national security threat.
The impunity of TTP from Afghan territory takes on an added evil with the growing global reputation of the Taliban. Foreign government recognition gives legitimacy to the regime, and that could persuade it to ignore or brush aside regional security issues. Pakistan may thus increasingly find itself isolated in its battle to make the Taliban pay for cross-border terrorism. Regional implications are also unsettling.
Russia’s policy would set a model for other nations—China, Iran, and Central Asian republics—to follow in like manner, to have a businesslike relationship with Kabul while excluding from consideration the Taliban’s active encouragement of or accommodation to militant activity. This “Axis of Accommodation” would severely undercuts Pakistan’s efforts at mobilizing regional and global pressure against Afghan-based terrorism. The result could be a chilling re-alignment of the region’s anti-terror consensus, sacrificing geopolitical convenience for collective security. It must be underlined that Pakistan’s opposition to the Taliban is not the result of Western alignment or ideological drift. It is rooted in hard realities: rising casualty counts, declining border control, and a traumatized civilian population after years of war.
The TTP have assassinated tens of thousands of Pakistanis. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan districts have once again become frontline districts during the last few months. In this regard, Moscow’s acceptance of the Taliban seems oblivious to Pakistan’s strategic interests and sacrifices, Islamabad is confronted with a new diplomatic challenge. It needs to re-calibrate its regional strategy urgently. One, it needs to engage Moscow on bilateral and multilateral fronts, in no ambiguous terms definitively establishing the cost of unrestrained Taliban conduct. Two, it needs to internationalize Afghan-based militancy threat even more, mobilizing allies at the UN, OIC, and SCO to take the Taliban double game to further destinations. Third. Islamabad needs to consolidate its regional relations—particularly with those countries that share its concerns about extremism—to unite against unqualified Taliban normalization. Russia’s strategic risk can pay it short-term political dividends of influence and regional access, but it can also foster long-term instability that can engulf the broader region. The Taliban can bring a measure of order to Afghanistan, but no such acknowledgment can be a promise of peace until it decisively abjures transnational jihadism. For Pakistan, watchfulness, proactive diplomacy, and coalition-building in the region will be the characteristics of containing this perilous new dimension of South-Central Asian geopolitics.
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