Following the Taliban takeover in mid-August 2021, Pakistan has urged outside powers to work with Afghanistan’s new rulers in the interest of stabilising that conflictprone country.¹ It has accompanied these calls with pledges of non-partisanship. Yet, given Pakistan’s long history of interference in Afghanistan and decades of support for the Taliban, its denials of direct involvement are vastly overstated.

Seeing itself as inheriting the British Indian Empire’s western frontier, the socalled Durand Line, in 1947, Pakistan has long perceived Afghanistan as falling within its sphere of influence. Afghanistan’s refusal to recognise the 2,430km line as the international border and its...

In the wake of the Taliban takeover, Pakistan denied the responsibility often attributed to it by the U.S. and Afghans now in political opposition for shaping the Afghanistan conflict’s trajectory.⁴ Instead, Pakistani policymakers held a host of factors responsible for the Taliban’s state capture. These included the Biden administration’s hasty, unconditional withdrawal and the lack of support for former President Ashraf Ghani’s government inside Afghanistan. As Prime Minister Imran Khan complained, Pakistan is “being held responsible for the shortcomings of the United States” in Afghanistan.⁵ Pakistan’s national security adviser underlined the point, asking: “Did Pakistan tell the Afghan National Army...

Fearing that the Taliban’s government would be internationally isolated and deprived of crucial funding, Pakistan launched a diplomatic offensive aimed primarily at the West, particularly the U.S. and EU states.¹⁵ Underscoring Taliban cooperation in facilitating Western evacuation flights of foreign citizens and Western-aligned and at-risk Afghans, Islamabad also emphasised the Taliban’s apparent willingness to follow through on international commitments with regard to basic rights and counterterrorism. Responding to the Taliban’s spokesman’s first press conference, a Pakistan foreign ministry representative pointed to “positive indications”. “We have particularly noted his comments about not letting Afghanistan become a terror haven, protection of lives...

In international and regional forums and in bilateral meetings with representatives of the U.S. and other key Western states, Pakistani officials continue to insist that the Taliban takeover has not destabilised Afghanistan. Pakistan’s UN envoy told the UN Security Council meeting on Afghanistan in November that the nightmare scenarios feared after the Taliban takeover “have not come to pass” as “there has been no widespread violence or violation of human rights” and the “security situation has vastly improved”.⁴⁵

Meeting Taliban officials in Kabul and Islamabad, Pakistani officials also continue to advise the Taliban that they need to compromise if they...

As Islamabad forges policy toward Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, it faces new security challenges, key among which is the cross-border presence of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Military operations since the mid-2000s had largely managed to oust the TTP, a coalition of several mainly Pashtun Deobandi militant groups, from Pakistan’s tribal belt and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s mainland. Closely aligned ethnically and ideologically with the Afghan Taliban, who are also mainly Pashtun and Deobandi, the Pakistani Taliban leadership and thousands of fighters then relocated to Afghanistan. The TTP subsequently resorted to cross-border attacks that claimed scores of lives of military personnel and civilians.⁷⁷

Islamabad has...

While Islamabad’s support of the Taliban government is understandable as a way to keep its western neighbour stable, Pakistani policymakers should avoid acting as Taliban advocates at the cost of other vital relationships, including with the U.S. and the European Union, important security and economic partners. An analyst cautioned: “By becoming the flagbearer of the Taliban, Pakistan has not endeared itself to many in the international community”; a former foreign minister also expressed concern that “many people in the Pakistan government right now are becoming spokespersons for the Taliban”.¹¹⁴ By taking on that role, a former air chief of staff...

Islamabad may view the Taliban as its closest ally in Afghanistan, but the group’s seizure of power is far from ideal for Pakistan. Pakistani leaders hoped to bring the Taliban in from the cold as part of an internationally recognised and funded power-sharing arrangement. Instead, the former insurgents’ government is starved of aid, lacking formal recognition by a single state worldwide and ruling a country that is about to be consumed by the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.

In these circumstances, Pakistan has few good options. Its leaders are right to push the world to give Afghanistan more than humanitarian aid...