To preserve its own stability, Pakan must stabilise Afghanan first

The euphoria felt many in Pakan over a Taliban victory in Kabul six months ago is subsiding. The government had hoped that a friendly — some would say proxy — regime in Afghanan would ease its concerns about the Pakani Taliban.
But instead, there has been a spike in terror attacks in recent months, which Pakani officials say were planned militants hiding inside Afghan territories.
Still, senior Pakani civil and security officials remain sanguine about the future, or, at the very least, stress that a stable Afghanan is essential for a stable Pakan. It’s a position that puts Pakan in a tight corner: The country must continue to help the new Taliban government, while also contending with the growing security and economic risks to Pakan that have come with the new regime.

“Is there a chance that if the Taliban government is squeezed, there could be a change for the better? No.” Prime Miner Imran Khan of Pakan said in an interview with CNN earlier this month.
He stressed that the world will also eventually have to deal with the Taliban for the lack of a second or better alternate.
“So the only alternative we have right now is to work with them and incentivise them for what the world wants: inclusive government, human rights and women’s rights in particular,” he added.
So far, however, the government’s efforts for the diplomatic recognition of the Afghan Taliban and calls for more global financial assance have yielded few results. Pakan itself not diplomatically recognising the Afghan Taliban shows the dilemma the country faces.

Pakan witnessed a 42% increase in terror attacks in 2021 compared to the previous year, according to the Islamabad-based Pak Institute of Peace Studies, with a significant surge after Kabul fell. The report noted that the fall of Kabul had started adversely influencing the country’s militant landscape and security, saying the change in Afghanan is “not helping in any way Pakan’s efforts to deal with the militant groups threatening its security.”
The institute documented that the Pakani Taliban, or Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakan, a banned militant group responsible for some of the country’s worst terror attacks, alone was responsible for 87 attacks that killed 158 people, an increase of 84% relative to 2020.
Until late 2020, the Pakani Taliban seemed considerably weakened, its top leadership killed or pushed into Afghanan after a Pakani military offensive in 2014. But alongside the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanan, the insurgency has made a comeback and is using its resurgence to instill fear in Pakani traders, government officials and law enforcement.
Using telephone numbers starting with the Afghanan international dialing code, the Pakani Taliban have been calling and threatening affluent Pakani traders to pay extortion money.
A Taliban fighter secures the area after a roadside bomb went off in Kabul Afghanan, November 15, 2021d. (AP)
“Traders have been forced to pay huge amounts of extortion money because of fear,” said Muhammad Azam, a Karachi-based trader, who says he paid around $2,850 last month to the terror outfit.
“If a trader refuses to pay it, the militants detonate small bombs near their homes to frighten them into succumbing to their demands. If they continue to refuse payment, militants harm them or their family members,” Azam said.
Such threats have also extended to senior government officials, many of whom say they pay because they fear being attacked at political rallies or during other public events — as has been the fate of senior political leaders in the past.
One senior federal government miner, hailing from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, said he recently paid a few million rupees to the Pakani Taliban to avoid being attacked. Another official, who spoke to The New York Times on the condition of anonymity because of security fears, said when he refused to pay, a militant threatened him in person.

Police officers, particularly those protecting polio vaccinator teams, have been a key target of such attacks. In 2021, militants, mainly belonging to Pakani Taliban, killed 48 officers and injured 44 others in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province alone, according to police statics. Much of the violence occurred in the last few months of the year.
Despite repeated attempts, Pakan has been unable to get firm guarantees from the Afghan Taliban that they would take action against the Pakani Taliban operating in Afghanan. The worsening security situation was one of the top agenda items in talks between Taliban authorities and Moeed Yusuf, the Pakani national security adviser, when he visited Kabul last month.
The Afghan Taliban are “committed to taking necessary steps to ensure that Afghan soil is not used for attacks against Pakan,” Yusuf said, adding that Pakan “will continue to extend humanitarian assance to Afghanan, and engage with the Taliban on matters of mutual interest and concern within the internationally permissible framework.”
Analysts also note that Pakan’s economy has been hurt the situation across the border, as millions of US dollars are reportedly smuggled over the border per day. To mitigate this, the State Bank of Pakan in October limited the amount of US dollars that travellers are allowed to take to Afghanan.
A Taliban fighter sits on the back of a vehicle with a machine gun in front of the main gate leading to the Afghan presidential palace, in Kabul (AP)
One of the upsides for Pakan of the collapse of the former Afghan government has been the damage it did to India’s second front against Pakan, according to Asif Durrani, a former Pakani ambassador to Afghanan and Iran.
Pakani officials had long accused India of supporting terrorism in Pakan through Indian consulates inside Afghanan, with the support of the former Afghan government’s intelligence agency. After the Taliban takeover, Pakani officials say that the Indian footprint has been diminished, although they still blame India for funding the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakan and Baluch separat groups.
This has been particularly acute in southwestern Baluchan, a natural gas and mineral-rich province and the site of major Chinese projects.
On January 27, the Pakani military said 10 of its soldiers were killed in a firefight in the Kech drict of Baluchan province. Less than a week later, more than a dozen suicide attackers, heavily armed with rocket launchers and sophicated weapons, attacked two Pakani paramilitary camps in the remote dricts of Panjgur and Naushki along Pakan’s southern border with Iran and western border with Afghanan.

“The Baluch insurgents are also drawing strength from the Taliban’s example of defeating the United States, and the TTP has been helping them with training and tactics for some time,” said Asfandyar Mir, a senior expert at the United States Institute of Peace, referring to the Pakani Taliban. “With Afghanan more permissive to the TTP, Afghanan-based Baluch insurgents — despite losing the patronage of the former Afghan government — still have help in Afghanan.”
Senior security officials in Islamabad also say they are mindful of the capacity issues of the Afghan Taliban, who don’t have total control over all of their members. Some low-level Afghan Talibs, they say, maintain their links with the Pakani Taliban, a fact recognised the senior Afghan Taliban leadership who acknowledge their shortcomings and resolve to allay Pakan’s concerns.
Some analysts, however, warn that Pakan is overreaching in its optimism and hopes placed with the Afghan Taliban.
Pakan’s Prime Miner Imran Khan. (File/Reuters)
“The ideological convergence between the Afghan Taliban and the TTP terror network is inescapable,” said Mosharraf Zaidi, an Islamabad-based policy and security analyst. “Combined with the allure to explicitly support Pashtun nationalism, this ideological convergence between Kabul and the TTP terror network means that the Taliban are not aligned with Islamabad on two key security issues.”
Pakan, Zaidi said, now has largely the same Afghanan on its border that it did before August 2021, when Kabul fell, but with one profound difference.
“It no longer has a capable counterterrorism partner, a la the US government, to work with,” he said.
Other commentators second this assessment.

Ironically, Pakan, which supported the Taliban against the United States and has been batting for the movement’s international recognition since August 2021, is the first country to charge that, under the new Taliban government, Afghan territory is being used for international terrorism, Mir said.
Pakan made the accusation after TTP militants firing from inside Afghanan killed five Pakani soldiers at a border post in northwestern Kurram drict February 6.
Mir added: “The hollowness of the Afghan Taliban’s counterterrorism guarantees has become apparent in their treatment of the Pakani Taliban.”