Pakistan’s relations with Afghanistan have reached a new low following a series of lethal border clashes in October 2025. The fighting was triggered by a surge in Islamist militant attacks, the deadliest in over a decade, in Pakistan’s western borderlands.¹ Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, abutting Afghanistan, has borne the brunt of militant violence. The jihadist Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP, also known as the Pakistani Taliban) and its affiliates, such as the Hafiz Gul Bahadur Group, are responsible for much of the bloodshed.

Created in 2007, the TTP is a coalition of Islamist, mainly Pashtun, militant groups. These had gained a power base...

Attacks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa by the Pakistani Taliban and its affiliates have been on the rise. They started with the umbrella group’s formation in 2007, and peaked in 2014, before tailing off as a result of the Pakistani military’s counter-insurgency campaign, which pushed many TTP fighters into areas where NATO forces were deployed in Afghanistan.⁶ The pace of attacks picked up again, however, soon after the Afghan Taliban seized power in Kabul in mid-2021. While violence declined for a few months in the second half of 2022, during talks between Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government and the TTP, mediated...

With TTP attacks surging and the death toll, particularly among state personnel, rising, Pakistan’s Afghanistan policy has changed drastically – from defending the Afghan Taliban authorities abroad to becoming one of their fiercest detractors. Soon after the Taliban takeover, Islamabad portrayed itself as a bridge between Afghanistan’s new rulers and the world, calling for international engagement with Kabul to help it address a major economic crisis.⁴² But the Taliban’s TTP connections have tested Islamabad’s patience, and bilateral relations have hit rock bottom since the October 2025 border clashes. In international forums, including at the UN Security Council where Pakistan is...

Before the escalation in October 2025, Islamabad had resorted to economic levers in a bid to press Kabul to crack down on the TTP. It also forcibly repatriated hundreds of thousands of Afghan nationals living in Pakistan as a means of punishing the Afghan authorities. In the wake of the October clashes, Islamabad has stepped up such pressure tactics and punitive actions.

Immediately after the Taliban takeover, Islamabad had fostered economic ties with the new rulers, including through concessions on bilateral and transit trade. But as tensions with Kabul over militancy heightened, Islamabad began using economic levers to try putting...

The rationale behind such punitive measures is that – besides the jihadists themselves – the Afghan Taliban are primarily responsible for the high tide of violence in Pakistan’s western borderlands. Pakistani officials are right that Kabul should be doing more to curb the TTP’s cross-border incursions. But that is not the whole picture. Pakistan’s own response to the resurgent militancy lacks coherence, due to sharp differences between the federal and provincial authorities about how to deal with the TTP. These differences undermine the capacity of the military and provincial police to cooperate in counter-insurgency operations.

An additional and related problem...

As militancy surges in Pakistani regions bordering Afghanistan and the risks of another outbreak of armed conflict rise, Islamabad and Kabul should step back from the brink, defusing tensions through dialogue with the backing of friendly countries. Islamabad should also rethink its own responses to the TTP, avoiding civilian harm and ensuring local support as it counters an insurgency that has claimed the lives of thousands of security personnel and civilians.

As militant violence surges to alarming levels in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the pro-spects of achieving a negotiated peace between Islamabad and the TTP appear remote at best. Past attempts, such...

After growing exponentially over the last few years, jihadist violence in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa shows few signs of abating despite intensified military-led counter-insurgency operations that have killed hundreds of militants. Anti-militant sentiment is rife in the region, creating opportunities for state forces to gain local support. But counter-insurgency efforts will prove more effective if local concerns about security and economic costs are taken into account. Strengthening Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s provincial police and ensuring that the forces are responsive to local concerns remains a top demand of many political and social leaders in the conflict-hit province, alongside better coordination between federal and provincial...