November 21, 2025

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Tensions Between Afghanistan and Pakistan Destabilize South Asia

AP Photo/Ahsan Shahzad

Continued tensions between the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani state threaten to destabilize South Asia further, as terrorist attacks in recent weeks have placed the region on edge. In early October, Pakistan launched airstrikes against what it claimed were Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP) (Pakistani Taliban) targets on Afghan soil. The strikes hit Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul, as well as Khost, Jalalabad, and Paktika. The timing of the strikes was interesting, given that they occurred shortly after the Taliban’s foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, visited a Deobandi madrassa in northern India. Pakistan views a warming relationship between the Afghan Taliban and India as a major concern, given the zero-sum lens through which Islamabad and New Delhi view their relationship. Pakistan continues to suffer from economic and political instability, with many Pakistanis concerned over the country’s creeping authoritarianism.

The Taliban retaliated against the Pakistani airstrikes by launching attacks on frontier posts along the Durand Line, the internationally recognized border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. This border area remains a flashpoint between Kabul and Islamabad, and Pakistan accuses the Afghan Taliban of providing shelter and support to the TTP, which the Afghan Taliban denies, even as its leaders acknowledge the obvious affinity and shared ideology of the two groups. Still, a United Nations Monitoring Team report from July described al-Qaeda training camps operating in Afghanistan where Pakistani Taliban fighters were also being trained. Western countries suffer from a dearth of intelligence when it comes to what is happening in Afghanistan, and while the Afghan Taliban has implicitly sought to curtail al-Qaeda's activities, the group has the ability to rest, recuperate, and re-arm unmolested. The current status of the Haqqani network — a powerful faction within the Taliban that has long operated as a semi-autonomous entity with deep ties to Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency — is also unclear.

Qatar and Türkiye brokered a ceasefire between Pakistan and the TTP in mid-October, and regional mediation efforts took place in Istanbul, but tensions remain high and trade between Afghanistan and Pakistan has suffered. The Taliban does not exert a monopoly on force over the whole of Afghanistan’s territory, as various non-state armed groups operate openly on Afghan soil. Some, like al-Qaeda and the TTP, work in tandem with the Afghan Taliban, while others, like the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISK), openly wage war against the current regime. Pakistan is pushing the Afghan Taliban to crack down on the TTP, which the former finds unpalatable for ideological reasons, but more practically, kinetic actions against the Pakistani Taliban could lead to splintering, with some of the more hardcore fighters migrating to ISK and reinforcing its ranks. ISK has been improving its media operations, making them more sophisticated and achieving greater reach and resonance, enabled in part by emerging technologies like artificial intelligence.

Pakistan, meanwhile, is no stranger to providing support to terrorist groups, evidenced by Islamabad’s support, primarily through the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), to a range of militant groups, including the Afghan Taliban, which the Pakistanis supported for two decades during the U.S. military’s campaign in Afghanistan. Yet this is the risk that has always been possible with Pakistan’s support for a wide range of terrorist and insurgent groups. Some have described it as an example of Frankenstein’s monster, where the groups that Islamabad has cultivated, nurtured, and assisted over the years eventually turn on their masters. This strategy has always been risky, some would argue myopic, and the Pakistani state is now being forced to grapple with its longtime double-dealing. As witnessed following the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, sponsorship of proxy groups, similar to the case with Iran and its Axis of Resistance, can drag a country into a conventional war from which it can be difficult to extricate itself.

The situation in the region devolved further following a car bomb attack at New Delhi’s Red Fort in early November. The following day, a Pakistani Taliban front group called Jamaat ul-Ahrar claimed credit for a suicide bombing in Islamabad. But just this week, Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi claimed that both of the suicide bombers were Afghan nationals. This string of attacks comes at a precarious time. In April, militants from Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) launched an attack in the tourist destination of Pahalgam, located in Indian-administered Kashmir, that killed more than two dozen. That led to an exchange of harsh rhetoric between Pakistan and India, with the nuclear-armed neighbors rattling sabers, further demonstrating how terrorist proxy groups have the potential to spark conventional warfare between nation-states. After that conflict, Pakistan is emboldened, and the Pakistani Army Chief, Asim Munir, has developed a strong relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump. Pakistan has also recently strengthened defense ties with Saudi Arabia. Civil-military relations in Pakistan are particularly fraught, and the country’s former Prime Minister, the now-imprisoned Imran Khan, has battled with the Pakistani military for influence and control over the past several years.

While much of the international community remains focused on the wars in Gaza, Ukraine, and Sudan, South Asia is lurching toward broader instability that spills across borders in the region. Over the past several years, Pakistan has found itself in conflict with several of its neighbors. In January of last year, Islamabad and Tehran exchanged rocket and missile attacks, while also accusing the other of supporting militants. The beneficiaries of a destabilized South Asia are the militant groups spread across Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and elsewhere, who thrive in areas where the government has little reach or influence. In other cases, these terrorist groups benefit from the direct sponsorship of the state.