Opinion | Pakistan And The Collapse Of Its 'Good Taliban, Bad Taliban' Illusions |
Opinion | Pakistan And The Collapse Of Its 'Good Taliban, Bad Taliban' Illusions
Updated: Mar 23, 2026 11:28 am IST Published On Mar 23, 2026 11:28 am IST Last Updated On Mar 23, 2026 11:28 am IST
Published On Mar 23, 2026 11:28 am IST
Last Updated On Mar 23, 2026 11:28 am IST
The 'Good Taliban, Bad Taliban' fallacy unravelled far quicker than Pakistan anticipated after the Afghan Taliban took over Kabul. Once nurtured, funded, and supported by the Pakistani establishment, the group has since become one of the most pressing security challenges and structural liabilities for Rawalpindi.
Days after the Taliban overthrew the West-backed Ashraf Ghani government, then-Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan was quick to state that Afghans had "broken the shackles of slavery," and former chief of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Faiz Hameed was found drinking coffee in a Kabul hotel.
However, the moment of perceived victory proved fleeting. Since 2021, the relationship has gradually deteriorated, embroiled in a repetitive cycle of calibrated hostility, border clashes, closure of border crossings, backchannel third-party mediation, short-lived ceasefire, and renewed violence. Pakistan also tried trade coercion, direct negotiation, and multilateral mediation with Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and China - with no meaningful success. The crux of the issue was the Afghan Taliban's inability, or rather unwillingness, to curb Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP), an anti-Pakistan group that has steadily intensified attacks in Pakistan's peripheral provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, as well as periodic small-scale attacks in urban cities.
That rupture has entered a far more volatile phase.
On March 16, the Afghan Taliban administration accused the Pakistani military of conducting airstrikes on the Omid Hospital in Kabul, a 2,000-bed substance-abuse rehabilitation facility. The Taliban alleged 400 deaths and 250 injuries among civilians in that attack. Nonetheless, Islamabad rejected these figures, claiming the target was an ammunition depot.
Pakistan's Information Minister Attaullah Tarar stated that the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) launched "precise, deliberate and professional" aerial strikes on military installations and terrorist infrastructure, which included an ammunition storage site, and that the visible detonations clearly indicated the presence of huge ammunition depots. Pakistan formally declared an "open war" with Afghanistan in late February, launching Operation Ghazab Lil Haq, translating to 'Rage for the Righteous Cause.' Over the weeks, Pakistan has launched strikes inside Kabul, Nangarhar, Paktika, Khost, and the Taliban's stronghold of Kandahar province. At present, both sides have agreed to temporarily pause the hostilities for Eid al-Fitr this week.
The deterioration was glaringly evident in 2022 - with the TTP relinquishing a ceasefire agreement with Pakistan and subsequently increasing its operations against Pakistani security forces. In the following years, the Taliban and Pakistani forces engaged in periodic border clashes, including gunfire along the Torkham border. Pakistan also launched three air campaigns on different occasions by December 2024 in response to TTP-led attacks, and for the first time, hit Kabul in October 2025. The ongoing conflict was triggered by a suicide bombing at a border checkpoint in Bajaur on February 16.
India at the UN condemned Pakistan's airstrikes on Afghanistan, citing the attack during the month of Ramadan. Meanwhile, the Chinese foreign ministry raised concern over civilian deaths.
Despite the competing narratives from Kabul and Islamabad, the conflict gains attention for its scale and for the shift in Pakistan's rules of engagement - which involves an overt targeting of military and logistical infrastructure of the Taliban administration, rather than striking TTP-linked targets.
In a strikingly similar doctrine to India's approach toward Pakistan's Military-Jihadi Complex (MJC), Pakistan's recent attack in Afghanistan indicates its new policy of directly targeting the Taliban administration - alleged to be responsible for enabling the TTP. This has also involved a focus on degrading strategic assets that sustain the Taliban's military and governing capacity using its aerial capabilities; the Taliban does not possess a sophisticated air force.
This new militarised approach in Pakistan's operations in Afghanistan likely reflects a coercive bargaining strategy to alter the cost-benefit calculus of shielding the TTP, and compel a behavioral change from the Taliban. The Taliban's reluctance to curtail TTP has likely continued given the low costs associated with hosting the group instead of suppressing it; the Taliban and TTP share deep ethnic, ideological, tribal and familial connections. Pakistan's sustained military pressure is likely to change that strategic calculus.
The most near-term security threat is retribution from the Taliban. This could involve attacks, likely including suicide bombings by the TTP to maximise damage, in Pakistan's Punjab province - to hit the heart of Pakistan's military leadership. While the TTP has intensified attacks in border regions, their operational capabilities have remained largely limited in major cities of Islamabad, Lahore, and Karachi. The expansion of TTP's operations to urban centers could put Pakistan's civil-military establishment under significant domestic and economic pressure. Amid continued attacks from both TTP and Baloch insurgent groups, an escalation in militancy could further deter foreign investments and projects.
While Pakistan previously attempted to assassinate TTP chief Noor Wali Mehsud in October 2025, any such targeting of the Mehsud tribe remains domestically sensitive with the potential to create backlash in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Noor Wali belongs to the politically influential Mehsud tribe of South Waziristan, and any targeted killing framed or mistreated as tribal retribution could create problems between the Pakistani establishment and tribal seniors in the province, thereby intensifying sympathy and recruitment in TTP.
For India, a conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as an ongoing West Asian war involving Iran in Pakistan's neighbourhood, means a hostile neighbour with shrinking bandwidth along the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir. Simultaneously, it allows New Delhi an opportunity to once again present itself as a responsible stakeholder in Afghanistan.
(Aishwaria Sonavane is a research analyst at the Takshashila Institution)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
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