Abroad: how is the conflict between Kabul and Islamabad developing?

Afghanistan and Pakistan have agreed on a temporary ceasefire. Although the clashes on the border of the two countries continued in the morning. On the morning of October 15, the Afghan side reported more than 100 wounded and 12 dead as a result of shelling from Islamabad. Experts are confident that the conflict shows the ineffectiveness of the stability model in the region. At the same time, it is not worth hoping for its complete completion — there are many contradictions between the parties. Whether Islamabad and Kabul will be able to find ways to long—term peace is in the Izvestia article.

The region remains unstable

The Pakistani Foreign Ministry announced on the afternoon of October 15 that Islamabad and Kabul had managed to agree on a temporary ceasefire. The appeals of Qatar and Saudi Arabia to the parties to the conflict caused a pause in the clashes on the border. The Taliban have publicly stated that they stopped firing at the request of Doha and Riyadh. In addition, China and Iran offered their mediation. At the same time, none of the countries is ready to provide a platform for negotiations yet, said Andrei Serenko, head of the Center for the Study of Afghan Politics.

"This is not about resolving the situation in Afghanistan, but about unbalancing the security situation in the region itself, beyond the Afghan borders," the expert added.

At the same time, on the night of October 14-15, clashes continued on two key sections of the border — in the Kurram district and in the Kandahar-Baluchistan region. In the morning, Kabul reported 12 dead civilians and about 100 injured as a result of shelling from Islamabad.

The fighting began on October 9 after Pakistan's strikes on Tehreek-e-Taliban-Pakistan (TTP) targets in Kabul and other provinces of Afghanistan. Islamabad does not officially acknowledge its involvement in these attacks. On the night of October 11-12, the Taliban began shelling Pakistani border posts, after which full-fledged clashes began. According to their results, Pakistan reported 23 dead soldiers from its side and more than 200 eliminated fighters from Afghanistan.

The conflict shows that the region remains unstable, and it is not worth hoping for a peaceful settlement in it, Andrei Serenko said in an interview with Izvestia.

— The countries of the region did not recognize Afghanistan under the Taliban regime. And today, no model of interaction with this state and this regime has been developed," he said.

Pakistan had the closest and longest-standing relations with the Taliban, but now they are fighting among themselves, which is very significant. This means that the hope for Pakistan as an intermediary country between the Taliban regime and other countries has not been justified, the expert added.

This also suggests that the developed model of stability in the region, based on tacit agreements with Kabul and targeted intermediaries represented by Arab countries, is extremely ineffective. Serenko is confident that today she is facing new challenges that countries do not know how to respond to.

Causes of conflict

There are two main reasons for the current conflict — the border dispute and the TPP grouping, Pyotr Topychkanov, Candidate of Historical Sciences, head of the New Challenges in South and Southeast Asia sector, told Izvestia.

— These states have not resolved the issue of the border, which was drawn back under the British, and Pakistan is inclined to recognize this line as a border, while for Afghanistan it divides the Pashtun tribes. Accordingly, for Kabul, the recognition of this line as a border would mean an obstacle to the free movement of Pashtuns in the historical zone of their residence," Topychkanov explained.

We are talking about the Durand line, which was established in 1893 as the border between the two countries.

The second reason is that Afghanistan harbors the militants and infrastructure of the TTP group on its territory, who have carried out numerous terrorist attacks on the territory of Pakistan, Topychkanov stressed.

For understanding, the TTP acts as an association of Pakistani jihadist groups. Their goal is to undermine Pakistan's statehood and impose their interpretation of Sharia law on the country. The TTP has carried out a large number of attacks on Pakistan's security forces and terrorist attacks in the country. One of the bloodiest was the massacre at a school in Peshawar, when 150 people were killed, 134 of whom were children. According to Serenko, within the framework of the current Afghan-Pakistani confrontation, methods of interaction between jihadist organizations that use the Afghan foothold to expand their expansion are being worked out.

After the Taliban returned to power in 2021, the TTP gained a new haven. In 2022, with the mediation of Kabul, the organization tried to establish a truce with Pakistan, but in November of the same year it broke it and launched a series of attacks on the Pakistani army in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The cumulative losses since 2021, according to the press, are in the thousands.

Back in early autumn, there was a sharp surge in TPP activity in the provinces of Pakistan, Serenko explained.

— The murders of Pakistani security forces have become commonplace, and the number of their casualties has steadily increased. Therefore, Pakistan decided to strike at Kabul, although it was unsuccessful. Islamabad did not do this out of a good life," he said.

Serenko added that the Pakistani Taliban are receiving military and technical support from the Afghan Taliban. Islamabad has to respond by destroying the traffic infrastructure in Afghanistan. In response, the Afghans begin firing at the border checkpoint. The situation resembles a "vicious circle," the expert believes.

Pakistan has repeatedly appealed to Afghanistan to stop providing asylum, financial and technical support to the TPP, but Kabul does not agree to this because it sees the Pakistani Taliban as its brothers, Topychkanov explained.

— This leads to an insurmountable disagreement between the two countries. But there are other stories, in particular, for Pakistan, the fact that the current Afghan authorities are flirting with India has become an irritant. Moreover, the Pakistanis accuse India of using various terrorist groups in Afghanistan against Pakistan," the expert added.

In the current conflict, the Pakistani army is attacking the infrastructure of the TTP training camps and the organization's drug bases in Afghanistan. In addition, Islamabad is targeting the personal drug business of the leaders of the Afghan Taliban, Serenko said.