Since the Istanbul talks collapsed in early November 2025, Afghanistan and Pakistan have slid from managed tension into open conflict. Pakistani air strikes — Operation Ghazab lil Haq — have reached Kabul, the Taliban has struck back across the frontier, and a United Nations tally records at least 372 Afghan civilians killed in the first quarter of 2026 alone. The violence has continued: Pakistani air strikes in early June 2026 killed at least more Afghan civilians, including children, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). Through all of it, multiple rounds of internationally mediated talks — Doha, Istanbul, Riyadh, Urumqi, and an April back-channel — have produced dialogue without settlement. This article examines why every round has failed. The answer lies less in the negotiating room than at home: on both sides of the Durand Line, the actors who could concede are not the actors in control.

Pakistan: A Contested Policy

Pakistan's approach to Afghanistan has been contested terrain, producing two distinct alignments. The first ran across civilian-political actors — Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), civil society, tribal leaders, clerics, and business figures — broadly aligned around dialogue and economic engagement as the route to resolution. The second saw the central government and security establishment converge on a shared narrative of Taliban complicity and kinetic action as the primary instrument.

Pakistan's accusation that the Taliban was complicit in the Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP) threat substantially predates this conflict. What characterized the current period was a narrowing of the divergences that had complicated Pakistan's Afghanistan messaging in preceding years. The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) provincial government consistently advocated direct dialogue with Kabul, at times offering to conduct talks themselves — a position the federal government rejected as constitutionally impermissible — while Imran Khan publicly offered to mediate between the two governments. Tribal and political figures convened a Peshawar jirga in March 2026 — political leaders, tribal elders, religious scholars, and civil society representatives — issuing a joint declaration urging both sides to de-escalate. Clerical figures attempted a parallel religious track: over 1,000 Afghan clerics gathered in December 2025 to issue a fatwa banning Afghans from participating in armed conflict outside Afghanistan. The business community pushed through joint Pakistan-Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce meetings, facilitated by UNAMA, with ACCI Chairman Hashemi stating closures were harmful to both economies. Pakistan's own Parliamentary Secretary for Commerce argued that "banning has never served as a solution". None of it landed. The jirga was noted as non-binding by its own organisers, no Afghan representatives attended, and neither government responded — a measure of how little space remained for civilian-led initiatives by that point.

The picture on Pakistan's side is one of competing alignments rather than a single coherent position. PTI and civil society consistently backed dialogue; those efforts were futile. The federal government had ruled as early as 2025 that KP negotiations with Afghanistan fell outside provincial jurisdiction, and that position held: as late as April 2026, the KP Assembly was still passing resolutions demanding the federal government end the conflict through diplomatic channels — to no response. The central government was not a neutral arbiter between these positions. It was itself aligned with the military approach. Pakistan's own Defence Minister publicly described the arrangement as a "hybrid model" of governance — a "co-ownership of the power structure" in which the army chief wields greater authority than elected ministers on national security questions. Prime Minister Sharif, President Zardari, Field Marshal Munir, and Defence Minister Asif each deployed the same accusation — that Kabul had aligned with the TTP by permitting militant use of Afghan territory — to frame the February strikes and the campaign that followed. 

Zardari described Pakistan's strikes as its "inherent right to defend his people against terrorism emanating from across its borders." Sharif reaffirmed the operation would continue "with full resolve." Munir, as Field Marshal responsible for carrying out the operation, visited troops in forward areas and stated that "all necessary measures would be taken to neutralize the threat emanating from across the border." Asif, notably brazen throughout, was the figure who declared Pakistan in "open war" with Afghanistan, warned of further air strikes if the Taliban continued to allow militant use of Afghan territory, and declared after the Eid truce that the campaign would proceed "with full intensity." This is the alignment that matters analytically: not merely a shared belief in Taliban complicity, but a shared commitment to kinetic action as the primary response — placing the central government firmly on the military's side of the divide. Munir went further than his civilian counterparts by asserting that roughly 70 percent of the TTP is composed of Afghans, foreclosing diplomatic off-ramps that would involve treating the TTP as a domestic Pakistani problem — as the Taliban consistently insisted it was. At a January 2026 press conference, DG ISPR Chaudhry declared the Afghan Taliban had become the "mother organisation" of the TTP — and that India was using the Afghan Taliban as proxies. The alignment between military and civilian messaging was total. Most consequential was the late-March reporting that TTP chief Noor Wali Mehsood was being sheltered by the Afghan Taliban inside Kabul's Green Zone, shifting Pakistan's case from forensic attribution of individual attackers to a claim anchored in the physical location of TTP leadership.

One notable exception is instructive precisely because it is an exception: in April, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry welcomed tribal ceasefire agreements brokered by elders in Nuristan and Kunar as evidence that "local people want peace," with Pakistani soldiers attending the signing while no Taliban representatives were present — an arrangement that bypassed Kabul entirely. The contrast with Pakistan's dismissal of earlier tribal jirgas calling for negotiation suggests the objection was never to community engagement per se, but to outcomes that did not serve Pakistani interests.

It was the India-proxy framing that carried the deepest strategic significance. The US Defence Intelligence Agency has assessed that Pakistan regards India as an existential threat, around which its military identity, force posture, and nuclear doctrine are organized. By folding Afghanistan into that frame — casting the Taliban as an Indian instrument rather than a regional security problem — Pakistan's leadership elevated the conflict from a counterterrorism challenge with diplomatic solutions to an existential one without them. The MoFA channeled the same line into the formal international record: its self-defence declaration for the February strikes accused militant groups of operating from Afghan soil with Taliban complicity; Special Representative Sadiq Khan pushed the security concerns at the Meeting of Special Representatives in Tehran; and Permanent Representative Asim Iftikhar Ahmad addressed the Security Council naming the TTP, the Bacloch Liberation Army’s Majeed Brigade, Islamic State Khorasan Province, and al-Qaeda as groups operating from Afghan soil. The UN Monitoring Team's February report noting that the Taliban was providing a permissive environment for the TTP was treated as independent validation. A joint Pakistan-China statement in May elevated the accusation from a bilateral complaint to a multilateral framework backed by Beijing.

The Taliban: Denial Over a Divided House

The Taliban answered through denial and counter-accusation. Spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid consistently framed the TTP as Pakistan's domestic issue and distinguished between the Pakistani state and its military establishment as the driver of the conflict. In January 2026, he called DG ISPR Chaudhry's statements "irresponsible, provocative, and baseless propaganda" — directly in response to the press conference in which Chaudhry declared the Afghan Taliban the "mother organisation" of the TTP. As recently as May 2026, Mujahid rejected Pakistan's attribution of the Bannu attack as "baseless." More broadly, Mujahid has repeatedly accused Islamabad of "creating regional instability at the behest of major powers." As noted in Heretics, Adversaries and Legitimacy, this reflects the Taliban's systematic repositioning of Pakistan as its primary external adversary — replacing the role the United States occupied for the previous two decades — while framing Pakistan as a delivery mechanism for US and Western strategic interests. The accusation had a concrete basis. And as discussed in  Realignment, Rivalry and the Limits of Engagement, the US backed Pakistan's right to self-defence after the February strikes, deepened the strategic partnership through the Munir-Trump minerals deal, and was actively reviving Cold War-era cooperation — giving the Taliban grounds to frame Pakistan's military action as Washington-backed aggression rather than a self-interested bilateral dispute. The framing positions Pakistan as a proxy of external powers rather than a self-interested regional actor, and has the functional effect of allowing the Taliban to deflect Pakistan's core security grievance without engaging its substance. But the military-specific targeting of the accusation also suggests the Taliban was, consciously or not, reinforcing the same civilian-military distinction that PTI and civil society were drawing from the other side.

But the Taliban is not a unified actor. The regime is a coalition of competing factions: a Kandahari clerical court under Akhundzada, and a pragmatic Kabul-based network anchored by the Haqqani Network, which controls the Interior Ministry and intelligence apparatus. The Haqqani faction views the TTP not as a liability to be managed but as a strategic asset to leverage against Islamabad. The divergence is visible in the public record: Foreign Minister Muttaqi has welcomed the Urumqi process and urged Taliban social media users not to share anti-Pakistan content; Border Affairs Minister Noori warned Pakistan could face the same fate as the US and Soviet Union and claimed Taliban drone capabilities could reach Islamabad and Lahore; Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani has oscillated between threatening jihad and calling for mediation. Pakistan's Defence Minister acknowledged the split directly, noting that "one faction wants to slightly open space, while the other wants to impose complete suppression," while Akhundzada himself has demonstrated awareness of the risks of internal divisions.

Sirajuddin's oscillation reflects a uniquely precarious structural position. Akhundzada has been systematically undermining the Haqqani Network influence — building parallel military forces drawn from his own Noorzai tribe, embedding loyalist surveillance units within the General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI), and centralizing state finances. Sirajuddin is simultaneously the head of a network with deep institutional reasons to maintain the TTP relationship and a minister under a Supreme Leader working to dismantle his faction's power. His more conciliatory statements toward Pakistan are best read not as a genuine shift in strategic interest but as a demonstration of cooperative intent toward Kandahar — a signal that his faction is not the irreducible obstacle to any settlement, and therefore not a pretext for further centralization. The March 2026 report that an adviser to Akhundzada conveyed to Pakistan that the Haqqani Network would detain TTP leaders if formally requested — and that several Taliban figures view the TTP and the Balochistan Liberation Army as an intolerable burden on Afghanistan — confirms the internal divergence directly. That admission is itself a clear acknowledgement that the Taliban is not simply a unified protector of the TTP, but a coalition in which some figures actively resent the costs the relationship imposes. Kandahar appears to be offering to use its own rival faction as an instrument against the TTP: a move that would simultaneously satisfy Pakistan and further subordinate Sirajuddin to the Supreme Leader's authority.

These signals need to be read against a pattern of Taliban gestures that have consistently fallen short of what Pakistan demands. In December 2025, over 1,000 clerics issued a fatwa banning Afghans from participating in armed conflict outside Afghanistan; Pakistan's Foreign Office adopted a "wait-and-see" position, noting the Taliban had failed to live up to past commitments and reiterating its demand for written assurances. The fatwa fell well short of Islamabad's actual demand for military action against TTP sanctuaries — a view the FO's own response implicitly endorsed. A leaked audio in April showed Taliban officials instructing personnel to arrest TTP and Gul Bahadur fighters — the most operationally significant gesture yet. In May, reports suggested TTP leadership had been ordered to relocate away from Kabul; analysts read it as adjustment under pressure rather than a change in direction. The ability to issue a relocation order at all sits in direct tension with the Taliban's public position that the TTP operates beyond Afghan authority — you cannot simultaneously deny control over a group and direct its movements.

None of it has reduced violence on the ground. The fatwa came in December; the audio came in April; the relocation order came in May. Yet 15 police officers were killed at Bannu on May 10 and a vehicle-borne attack in Bajaur five days later killed eight or nine Pakistani soldiers, with the TTP claiming responsibility for both. Pakistan's demand has never been for gestures — it has been for verifiable, sustained action that demonstrably reduces violence inside its borders.

The Structural Deadlock

A rhetorical asymmetry runs through both sides' postures. The Taliban attended every mediated round, consistently signaled openness to dialogue through Muttaqi's diplomatic messaging, and even at the moment of maximum escalation in late February — when Pakistani strikes were hitting Kabul — told international media they remained open to negotiations. Pakistan's Defence Minister Asif, at the same moment, declared: "There won't be any talks. There's no dialogue. There's no negotiation." Pakistan's diplomatic apparatus — Foreign Minister Dar and Special Representative Sadiq Khan — maintained engagement channels throughout, but as the diplomatic arm of a government whose red lines and parameters were set by the military, not in opposition to it. The picture that emerges is of Pakistan's military dominating the conversation at the expense of the diplomatic track its own civilian officials were building.

And yet both governments have publicly characterized the relationship in terms of shared brotherhood and consistently returned to the table across every period of acute conflict since 2021. The underlying will to talk has never fully disappeared. The counter-argument deserves equal weight: the Taliban's rhetorical willingness to talk has not translated into operational concessions on the TTP. Willingness to sit across a table is not the same as willingness to act — and the Taliban's openness to dialogue may itself function as a form of deflection, sustaining a diplomatic process precisely to avoid delivering what that process demands.

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