Before the tension between the Taliban and Pakistan flared up, Michael Kugelman, a leading expert on South Asia at the Atlantic Council, had warned that the crisis between the Taliban and Pakistan would surpass Pakistan’s long-standing tensions with India. As of today, his prediction appears not only to have come true but also to have been vindicated by recent events. However, why, this time around, did Pakistan choose to declare an “open war” on the militant group that it once called the “Good Taliban”?
As eloquently put forward by Admiral Mike Mullen, who described the Haqqani network as “a veritable arm of the ISI,” Pakistan provided both logistical support and finances when the group surged in 1996 as beneficiary of the status quo ante resulting from the Mujahideen (the holy warriors). In 1997, when the Taliban captured Mazar-i-Sharif, Pakistan’s then foreign minister Gohar Ayub Khan, publicly threw diplomatic support behind them, saying Pakistan would recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan and did so eventually.
In The Wrong Enemy, Carlotta Gall argues that, even when the U.S.-led coalition dismantled the Taliban in 2001, Pakistan continued to regard the group as an “asset” while handing over al-Qaeda affiliates, whom the country viewed as “liabilities.” Between 2001 and 2021, Pakistan helped the Taliban sustain its insurgency in Afghanistan through indirect means. During those two decades, the Taliban’s leaders and fighters both enjoyed safe havens in Pakistan, where they were able to regroup, recruit, and plan their operations in Afghanistan.
Beyond providing unconditional material support, Pakistan advanced a broader narrative aimed at legitimizing the Taliban’s return to power for three key audiences. For the international community, it sought to cultivate the perception that the Taliban did not subscribe to transnational fundamentalist Islamism and therefore would not pose a global threat. This narrative, however, soon backfired when Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed in Kabul on July 31, 2022—nearly a year after the Taliban had retaken control of Afghanistan. For domestic Afghan audiences, Pakistan portrayed the Taliban as an indigenous religio-cultural force representing the Pashtun constituency within the broader political order. Finally, to the Taliban themselves, Pakistan framed the removal of their previous government as illegitimate, thereby portraying their renewed bid for power as a legitimate struggle.
However, with the Taliban returning to power in mid-2021, the Pakistan–Taliban all-weather friendship did not appear to age well. The Taliban began repeating a pattern that had previously contributed to their downfall in 2001 by once again harboring transnational militant groups. With approximately $7 billion worth of military equipment left behind by the United States following its chaotic withdrawal, the Taliban transformed Afghanistan into an international incubator for ideologically aligned militant outfits. Understanding Pakistan’s long-standing practice of supporting militant proxies against successive ruling authorities in Afghanistan over the past four decades, the Taliban appeared to have embraced the Pakistani Taliban, better known by the acronym TTP, whose fighters had fought alongside the Afghan Taliban against the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and U.S.- and NATO-led security forces.
Recognizing security threats emanating from the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, Central Asian states engaged with the Taliban not because they supported or trusted them, but because working with the group was viewed as a pragmatic engagement to reduce security risks, manage border stability, and maintain some influence over developments in Afghanistan. This shift reduced the Taliban’s dependence on Pakistan to a certain degree. As Pakistan’s leverage relatively diminished, Taliban decision-making took a different shape, contributing to growing friction between the two sides and a gradual deterioration in bilateral cooperation. Faced with a strategic dilemma between addressing Pakistan’s deteriorating security and maintaining ideological solidarity with the TTP, the Taliban seemed to have chosen the latter. This decision intensified Pakistan–Taliban tensions and contributed to a marked increase in violence in Pakistan, leading to growing Pakistani dissatisfaction with the Taliban, who were repeatedly blamed for their inability to act against Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) fighters.
In a bid to compel the Taliban to act against the TTP, Pakistan exhausted the options at its disposal. Having lost an effective proxy to counter the TTP’s rising violence, Pakistan’s India-centric military found itself ill-equipped to confront a renewed insurgency now partly armed with NATO-standard weapons. Long wary of India’s influence in Kabul, Pakistan went so far as to bomb Kabul in a rare but risky move on October 9, 2025, while the Taliban’s acting foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, was visiting India. In what appeared to be a tit-for-tat response, Muttaqi acknowledged India’s position on the disputed Kashmir region— a step that even the communist leader Hafizullah Amin never took.
Although the TTP has contributed primarily to instability, the deteriorating security environment in Pakistan cannot be ascribed to one single theater. In Balochistan, the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and other separatist groups continue to attack security forces and infrastructure. The conflict is rooted in historical grievances over political representation and resource distribution and frequently caused large scale destabilization in the province. At the same time, spillover militancy associated with transnational actors such as Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP) and ongoing border volatility with Afghanistan have further diversified the threat landscape. All of these dynamics signal a security challenge in Pakistan that is not episodic but structurally embedded, shaped by center-periphery tensions, uneven state capacity across regions such as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and ongoing governance constraints that limit institutional cohesion and policy effectiveness.
However, what has directly translated these underlying tensions into escalation with the Taliban is the resurgence and operational mobility of the TTP, whose members allegedly move freely across between two counties. Pakistan’s recent hardline stance is partly attributable to the increase in violence, which it blames on the Afghan Taliban’s unwillingness or inability to contain the TTP. Pakistan’s waning influence over the Taliban 2.0, coupled with the TTP’s allegiance to the Taliban’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, has been translated into a broader existential threat. This has finally prompted Pakistan’s Defence Minister, Khawaja Asif, to declare a so-called “open war” against the Taliban—the same Asif who had previously praised the group after it signed the Doha Accord, which paved the way for the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
There also appears to have been a mix of external and internal factors that helped Pakistan escalate militarily with little regard for civilian casualties, making coercion appear both inevitable and inexpensive. The lack of domestic and international legitimacy of the Taliban regime, combined with a lack of international sympathy, means that Pakistan has less political and diplomatic pressure to restrain its escalation and can do so despite heavy civilian casualties confirmed frequently by UN watchdog on the ground. Meanwhile, the Taliban regime’s continued fight against the society erodes their ability to mount an effective response. Improved relations with the United States ease external pressure on Islamabad and the growing ties between the Taliban and India are interpreted through Pakistan’s national security lens, reinforcing a “might is right” approach instead of reckoning peaceful alternatives. Taken together, these factors have lowered the perceived costs and risks of escalation, making military coercion an increasingly attractive policy option for Islamabad to pressure the Taliban regime into taking decisive action against the TTP.
Pakistan’s so-called “open war” on the Taliban does not necessarily translate into a broader rejection of the proxy venture but a grave admission of its unintended consequences the country’s military establishment could not have even imagined. Islamabad has long seen the Afghan Taliban as a strategic asset to help it pursue its regional interests and prevent Kabul from falling into hostile influence. But the Taliban’s return to power has revealed the limits of that approach. With little need for Pakistan to survive, the Taliban 2.0 has chosen ideological alignment with the TTP over the wishes of its erstwhile patron, turning an erstwhile ally into a security threat. Pakistan is therefore fighting the Taliban it once regarded as the “Good Taliban” because the balance of dependence has shifted, and the de facto authorities are now following their former patron’s example by harboring and unleashing militants. Ultimately, the conflict illustrates that while states can cultivate proxies, they cannot control them indefinitely once those proxies acquire power and strategic autonomy.
