KABUL: The Pakistani prime minister’s accusations of Afghan involvement in cross-border attacks are likely to further strain relations between the two neighbors, experts say, after 19 soldiers were killed in clashes in Pakistan’s northwest this week.
Over the past few days, Pakistani security forces have reported several raids in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on what it said were hideouts of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan — an outlawed armed group, which is separate from the Afghan Taliban.
After the military said on Saturday the clashes with the militants killed at least 19 soldiers and 45 fighters, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif told reporters in Bannu, one of the districts where the attacks took place, that “terrorists come from Afghanistan” and that Pakistan “will have nothing to do” with the Afghan administration if it chooses to support them.
While there has been no immediate reaction from Kabul to the Pakistani prime minister’s statements, they marked “an escalation in hostile rhetoric toward Afghanistan,” Ahmed-Waleed Kakar, analyst and founder of the Afghan Eye podcast, told Arab News.
Since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 2021, Pakistan has been accusing them of allowing TTP militants to use Afghan territory for cross-border attacks — a claim the Taliban have repeatedly denied.
“Kabul has routinely dismissed the allegations against it as being Islamabad’s attempts at distracting from its own ‘internal problems,’” Kakar said.
Similar allegations were made even before the Taliban took over the country following the collapse of its Western-backed government of Ashraf Ghani.
“The same accusation was used in part to justify building a towering security fence along a historically porous frontier that, according to Pakistan’s own and contemporary statements, has abjectly failed to provide the security it was touted to,” Kakar said.
“(That) development illustrates how closely intertwined Pakistan’s historically tense relationship with Afghanistan is with its own precarious and increasingly fragile domestic stability.”
When the Pakistani prime minister made similar accusations against Afghanistan in April, Hamdullah Fitrat, Taliban deputy spokesman, said Kabul should not be held responsible for Islamabad’s “failed policies” and that it did not permit any group to use Afghan soil for “any activity or operation against Pakistan.”
Afghan-Pakistani relations reached a new low after a wave of deadly suicide bombings in Pakistan two years ago. Islamabad blamed them on TTP and, as violence mounted, started deporting undocumented foreigners, mostly Afghans, saying that the high number of refugees posed risks to national security.
Over the past two years, 1.4 million Afghan nationals have been expelled, deepening a humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, which is struggling to accommodate the sudden influx of people.
“Islamabad is trying to justify the mass deportations by alleging refugee involvement in destabilizing activities — a claim that lacks sufficient substantiation,” said Naseer Ahmad Nawidy, political science professor at Salam University in Kabul.
“Further escalation of tensions serves no purpose. Both nations require economic development, regional connectivity, and constructive relations with the international community. Ongoing hostility only harms the broader region.”
