Pakistani outreach presents a dilemma for Afghanistan’s anti-Taliban resistance

On October 22, The New York Times gave credence to rumors of potential Pakistani support for the anti-Taliban resistance in Afghanistan. According to a Pakistani intelligence official and a senior resistance member cited in the report, Pakistani military and intelligence officials had met with resistance groups over the preceding months to discuss possible support. The potential cooperation would put the anti-Taliban resistance in the difficult position of seeking support from a deeply unpopular neighbor that spent decades backing the very movement it is fighting.

The Taliban and Pakistan, once close allies, have seen their relationship deteriorate since the Taliban’s capture of Kabul and the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Islamabad accuses the Taliban of supporting the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan (TTP), Ittehad al Mujahideen Pakistan (IMP), and other militant groups that have attacked the Pakistani state, particularly along its border with Afghanistan.

Although Pakistan has officially denied arming or recruiting Afghans to fight the Taliban, it has a long history of supporting Afghan groups seeking to overthrow governments in Kabul. In the mid-1970s, Pakistan provided sanctuary and training to Afghan Islamists, including Ahmad Shah Massoud, Burhanuddin Rabbani, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and supported their failed 1975 uprising against President Mohammad Daoud Khan.

Following the Soviet invasion, Pakistan helped organize the Islamic Unity of Afghan Mujahideen, better known as the Peshawar Seven. The alliance brought together seven Sunni parties, including Rabbani’s Jamiat-e Islami, whose commanders included Massoud, and Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e Islami. It provided a political and diplomatic umbrella for much of the resistance that fought Soviet forces and subsequently helped topple Mohammad Najibullah’s Soviet-backed government.

But when Hekmatyar, Pakistan’s favored client, proved unable to seize and consolidate power, Islamabad shifted its backing to Mullah Mohammed Omar’s Taliban, helping the movement capture Kabul in 1996. Pakistan later provided sanctuary to the Taliban following the US invasion, playing a critical role in its eventual return to power in 2021.

Pakistan’s repeated interventions in Afghanistan have long fueled resentment, although Afghan attitudes toward Islamabad and its allies have varied across different periods. During the US-backed republic, a BBG-Gallup survey conducted in late 2015 and published in 2016 found that only 3.7 percent of Afghans had a favorable opinion of Pakistan. Former Afghan presidents Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani regularly railed against Pakistani duplicity, blaming Islamabad for enabling Taliban attacks.

Pakistan’s recent airstrikes are unlikely to have improved that standing. The United Nations stated that strikes in Kunar and Helmand on October 1 killed at least 10 civilians, most of them children, and injured nine others. Nevertheless, anti-Taliban resistance groups have few other prospective backers willing to provide sanctuary or material support, potentially making cooperation with Islamabad an option despite its unpopularity and history of supporting the Taliban.

Tajikistan, whose relations with the Taliban have been frosty since the movement’s return to power, is unlikely to offer substantial support while Russia deepens its ties with Kabul. Iran welcomed Ahmad Massoud, leader of the anti-Taliban National Resistance Front, and other Afghan opposition figures to Ali Khamenei’s funeral. However, Tehran’s conflict with Israel and the United States limits the attention and resources it can devote to the resistance. These constraints leave neither country an obvious source of the sustained backing the anti-Taliban resistance needs.

Washington, meanwhile, has engaged the Taliban primarily on detainee issues. Although Keith Kellogg, US President Donald Trump’s former special envoy to Ukraine, recently urged engagement with a credible Afghan political alternative, there are no indications that the Trump administration will shift policy in Afghanistan.

With few other sources of external support, the anti-Taliban resistance faces several risks in pursuing assistance from Pakistan. First, Pakistan could simply be using the resistance to gain leverage over the Taliban. Pakistan is loath to commit ground forces to pressure the Taliban to take concrete action against the TTP or IMP. Using the resistance in conjunction with Pakistan’s air superiority could give Islamabad real leverage over the Taliban. However, should the Taliban take sufficient steps to rein in their compatriots, Pakistan would likely abandon the resistance in favor of a group it has supported for 30 years.

Additionally, Pakistani support could exacerbate divisions within the resistance. While Pakistan played a pivotal role in crafting the Peshawar Seven, it favored Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e Islami, contributing to open skirmishes and eventually a civil war following the collapse of the Soviet-backed Najibullah regime. Afghan resistance groups will have to guard against being divided as they compete for material support from a country responsible for killing tens of thousands of Afghan soldiers under the previous regime. The lack of unity inside the resistance makes it fair game for such tactics.

Lastly, receiving support from Pakistan could make it harder for the resistance to gain support from an Afghan population that has suffered through five decades of war. Will the resistance be able to condemn errant Pakistani airstrikes in Afghanistan that inevitably cause civilian casualties? If it does, will this jeopardize material support? Although reported talks between the two former enemies have just begun, the road forward is far from clear.

Pakistan’s support of the Taliban did not translate into the security Islamabad expected. Pakistan’s reported outreach to the resistance underscores how far relations between the two allies have deteriorated. Whether these discussions materialize into real or enduring support, they mark a striking turn: the Taliban’s former patron is exploring ties with the movement’s enemies, while those enemies must weigh assistance from a country that helped bring about their defeat.

Will Selber is a retired US CENTCOM foreign area officer with over 4 years in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is the owner of Grumpy Combat Veteran on Substack.