EARLIER last month, on March 11, 2025 to be precise, Pakistan experienced one of the worst incidents of terrorism when armed militants seized a passenger train – Jaffar Express – in a deserted mountainous area in its Balochistan province. They first blew up the railway track, causing the train to derail, and then took hostage hundreds of passengers. The Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) claimed responsibility for the attack.
At the same time, skirmishes between the border forces of Pakistan and Afghanistan continued. Quoting eye witnesses, the Pakistani media reported that heavy weapons were used by both sides mostly targetting checkpoints on hilltops and military installations on each side. Some buildings on the Afghan side were also destroyed.
These skirmishes across the border are a result of Pakistan’s attacks on Afghan territory, especially along the bordering regions of Khost and Paktia province in order to flush out terrorists belonging to Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The TTP has been launching more regular attacks against the Pakistani military following the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021.
It is ironic that the Taliban that Pakistan created, aided and supported in every way to seize power in Kabul – in order to acquire strategic depth in Afghanistan against India, should be clashing so consistently with Pakistan. Since they took over Kabul in 2021, Pakistan has increasingly been facing more attacks on its soil from Afghanistan.
This is inevitably the result of the decades-long policy that Pakistan has followed – of creating, nurturing, and supporting terror groups to fight, first the Soviet Union, and then India. Now, the proverbial chickens have come home to roost.
The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an armed outfit mostly comprising ethnic Pashtuns who live on either side of the Pak-Afghan border, wants the implementation of sharia in Pakistan based on its strict interpretation of Islam. It has now emerged as “Pakistan’s primary security challenge”. It is ranked as the third deadliest terrorist group globally and is Pakistan’s primary security challenge. In 2024 alone, it was responsible for 558 deaths, a 90 perception increase when compared to the previous year.
It has its roots amongst the many Pakistani jihadists who, having fought on behalf of the Pakistani government in Afghanistan and in Indian Kashmir, then turned against the Pakistani state for its support of the United States’ global war on terror. Formed in 2007, it was useful for Pakistan as it aided and sheltered the Afghan Taliban on its territory to launch attacks on the Afghan government to dislodge it. Now that the Afghan Taliban are back in power in Kabul, they are reciprocating the same support to the TTP.
The BLA, the armed wing of the Baloch Liberation Front, on the other hand, are fighting for Balochistan’s secession from Pakistan, following decades of exploitation of the province rich in minerals and natural resources, by the Pakistani state and the Punjabi elite. Their attacks on Pakistani personnel and assets have also intensified over the last couple of years marking a jump from 116 in 2023 to 504 in 2024.
According to the Global Terrorism Index (GTI) 2025, Pakistan now ranks as the world’s second most terrorism-affected country, after Burkina Faso. Terrorism-related deaths surged by 45 per cent in 2024 to 1,081, while attacks more than doubled from 517 to 1,099.
Pakistan blames the Afghan Taliban for helping and abetting both the TTP and the Baloch militants who are alleged to have gravitated to the Afghan Taliban and are supposed to have found sanctuary inside that country. Where Pakistan expected Afghanistan to become a major ally with the Taliban back in power, bilateral relations have instead come under increasing strain. Pakistan’s military operations inside Afghanistan have added to the tensions. The Torkham border, a major crossing for trade and supply lines and movement of people, had been closed for almost a month since February 21 due to a dispute over construction activities and was reopened following negotiations mediated by a jirga.
Pakistan is presently reaping what it sowed, becoming the world’s second most terrorism-affected country. And the Taliban that it created for its own agenda, has been ironically acting against its own military
In order to iron out tensions, Pakistan’s special envoy for Afghanistan – Ambassador Muhammad Sadiq – travelled to Afghanistan over the weekend where he met the acting Afghan Foreign Minister Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi in Kabul.
While security concerns remain a primary issue, the discussions initially focussed on trade and transit. A significant development in trade relations is the reopening of the Torkham border after a 27-day closure.
Both Pakistan and Afghanistan need each other for security, trade and supply lines, given Afghanistan’s landlocked geography but also its geopolitical location as a roundabout, connecting Pakistan to Central Asia. More than three million Afghans have also made Pakistan their home. Of them, at least 1.5 million are registered as refugees and Pakistani has announced their forcible repatriation to Afghanistan if they didn’t honour a March 31 deadline to voluntarily relocate to Afghanistan.
However, Sadiq’s trip underscores Pakistan’s strategic interest in maintaining dialogue with Afghanistan despite the persistent challenges.
Beyond this, Pakistan has doubled down on its attacks on both TTP and the BLF, even taking into custody human rights activists. It has also blamed India, along with Afghanistan, for these attacks.
This time, however, many Pakistani as well as Afghan analysts and policy makers understand that Pakistan has to reach out to its adversaries politically instead of taking the lazy way out by blaming its neighbours or the military option. For none has yielded concrete results. On the other hand, both Balochistan and the tribal regions lag behind the rest of the country in development and human index. As a result of its own policies, Pakistan finds itself once again, in between two estranged neighbours and the second most terrorism-affected country in the world. What an irony!
