ONLY SENDING MEN BACK, EH WOT

EU's push to deport Afghan refugees brings the Taliban back to the table

GENDER APARTHEID STATE 

The European Union is moving towards closer cooperation with Afghanistan's Taliban regime over the return of Afghan migrants, despite legal and human rights concerns about sending people back to the country.


Issued on: 15/05/2026 - RFI

An Afghan asylum seeker sits outside a tent in Brussels in September 2023. European governments are pushing for closer cooperation with Taliban authorities over the return of Afghan migrants. 

AFP - SIMON WOHLFAHRT

The European Commission this week confirmed that it had invited Taliban representatives to Brussels for technical talks on deportations, with EU officials saying the meeting could take place before the summer.

The discussions reflect growing pressure from several European governments seeking to send back rejected asylum seekers and Afghans convicted of crimes. Rights groups and migration analysts warn that conditions in Afghanistan remain unsafe.

“The European Commission, together with the Swedish Ministry of Justice, has sent a letter to the de facto authorities in Afghanistan asking them to take part in a technical meeting on the return of Afghan migrants,” European Commission spokesperson Markus Lammert told journalists in Brussels on Tuesday.

He said that EU member states had mandated the European Union to maintain "operational dialogue" with the Taliban, but added this "in no way" amounted to a formal recognition of the regime.

Two technical meetings between European officials and Afghan authorities have already taken place in Kabul. This time, the talks would be held in Brussels, bringing Taliban representatives into the heart of EU institutions.

Planned EU-Taliban talks on return of Afghan nationals spark backlash
Deportation pressure

Several European governments have been pushing Brussels for months to restart deportations to Afghanistan, which were heavily restricted after the Taliban returned to power in August 2021.

Twenty countries, including Germany, Poland, Greece and Italy, sent a joint letter to Brussels in October 2025 calling for negotiations with the authorities in Kabul.

They argue that Europe needs to resume deportations of some rejected Afghan asylum seekers and people convicted of crimes because they pose a security risk.

Germany became the first European country to deport Afghans back to Taliban-run Afghanistan in August 2024. Since then, 121 Afghans living illegally in Germany have been returned to Kabul in three deportation operations.

German authorities said those deported had criminal records involving offences including sexual violence, homicide and assault – but an investigation this month by German broadcaster ZDF found Berlin was also targeting single Afghan men with no criminal convictions.

Afghan nationals arrive at Hanover-Langenhagen airport in Germany in September 2025. AFP - MICHAEL MATTHEY


Taliban representatives travelled to Germany in July last year after demanding that direct talks take place before further deportations could go ahead.

“We want to carry out regular returns, and that does not mean only charter flights, but also commercial flights,” German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said in early October.

Austria followed 10 days later by deporting an Afghan refugee convicted of sexual offences and aggravated violence.

“These criminals must leave our country and where they come from does not matter,” Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker said.

EU confirms 'contact' with Taliban in Afghanistan over migrant returns
Rights concerns

Rights groups and migration specialists say deportations to Afghanistan remain dangerous under Taliban rule.

“It is obvious that the conditions are not in place for people to return to Afghanistan,” Laurent Delbos from Forum Réfugiés, a French refugee support organisation, told RFI.

While European law does not completely prohibit deportations to Afghanistan, member states remain bound by the European Convention on Human Rights, which bans torture and inhuman treatment.

“Case law from recent decades prohibits returning people to countries where they would face this kind of treatment,” explained Matthieu Tardis, a migration policy specialist and co-director of the French migration research group Synergies Migrations.

Afghan refugees gather during a protest calling for support from the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR in Islamabad in May 2022. AFP - FAROOQ NAEEM


UN agencies have repeatedly issued warnings over human rights violations in Afghanistan since the Taliban returned to power. Reports have documented arbitrary arrests, forced disappearances, political repression and what UN officials describe as “gender apartheid”.

Afghans were the largest group of asylum seekers in the European Union in 2025, while Eurostat figures showed that 73 percent received protection at the first stage of the asylum process.

The European Court of Human Rights blocked the deportation of an Afghan man from Sweden in March because of a “real risk of ill-treatment” if he returned, partly because of his “westernisation”.

Thousands of Afghan refugees return from Pakistan as border tensions boil over
Diplomatic line crossed

European governments are also trying to overcome practical barriers to deportations.

Without cooperation from the Taliban authorities on travel documents and flights, deportations remain difficult to carry out.

“These discussions must move forward if they want to implement these deportations,” Tardis explained.

Criticism has already emerged inside the European Parliament.

“For years, the European Commission has collaborated with some of the world’s most authoritarian regimes as part of European Union migration policy,” French Green member of the European Parliament Mélissa Camara told RFI.

"A new line has been crossed with the invitation of representatives of the Taliban regime. It marks a profound abandonment of the values and rights that form the foundation of the European Union."

Amnesty International researcher Zaman Sultani condemned what he called a “scandalous” shift that ignored arbitrary Taliban rule.

“Most of the deportees we spoke to are human rights activists who can no longer even return to where they lived or work because they fear being recognised and then tortured or killed,” he said. “But where can they return except home?”

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called in July last year for “an immediate halt to forced returns of all Afghan refugees and asylum seekers”.

This article has been adapted from the original verison in French by Caroline Renaux.

Sierra Leone to take in hundreds of West Africans deported by US, minister says

Sierra Leone has agreed to take in hundreds of West African migrants who are being deported by the United States, its foreign minister has said – the latest deal as part of the ​Trump administration's bid to accelerate removals.


Issued on: 16/05/2026 - RFI

Minister of Foreign Affairs Timothy Kabba, pictured at an Ecowas meeting in Abuja in December 2025, has said Sierra Leone will take in hundreds of West African migrants deported from the US. AFP - LIGHT ORIYE TAMUNOTONYE

The first flight of so-called third-country deportees will arrive in ⁠Sierra Leone on 20 May transporting 25 nationals from Senegal, Ghana, Guinea and Nigeria, Foreign Minister Timothy Kabba told Reuters.

“Sierra Leone signed a Third Country National Agreement ‌with the US to accept 300 Ecowas citizens from the US per year with a ⁠maximum of 25 a month," Kabba said, referring to the 15-member West African regional bloc.

The US has previously sent third-country deportees to African states including Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea ​and Eswatini.

The move has been criticised by legal experts and rights groups over the legal ‌basis for the transfers and the treatment of deportees sent to countries where they are not nationals.

Deportees to Africa forced home

Sierra Leone's arrangement to accept only deportees from Ecowas countries is similar to that of Ghana.

Deportees sent to Ghana, Equatorial Guinea and elsewhere on the continent have then been forced to return to their home countries ​despite receiving court-ordered protection in the US designed to prevent that from happening.

It is unclear whether the deportees sent to Sierra Leone will be allowed to stay there.

Kabba did not say what Sierra Leone would get in ​return for taking in the deportees, but noted it was "part of our bilateral relationship with ​the US to assist with its immigration policy".

In a report published in February entitled "At what cost?", Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said the total ​cost of third-country removals was unknown, but that more than $32 million had been sent directly to five countries – Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, El Salvador, Eswatini and Palau.

The US and Sierra Leone have been at odds on deportations before. In 2017, during the first Trump administration, Washington said the US Embassy in Freetown would deny tourist and business visas ⁠to Sierra Leonean foreign ministry and immigration officials because the government was refusing to take in Sierra Leonean deportees.

The State Department did ⁠not immediately respond ​to a request for comment on the new agreement with Sierra Leone. The White House and the State Department have previously said the deportations are lawful.

(with newswires)

India-Pakistan Wars And Crisis: Realism In Washington’s Policy – Analysis

May 16, 2026 
 Observer Research Foundation
By Kartik Bommakanti


The possibility of the United States (US) limiting India’s response to a Pakistani-sponsored terrorist attack on Indian soil or a conventional attack against Indian forces is now a source of consternation within the Indian strategic community. American officials have reportedly conveyed to India that it won’t automatically extend support to India in the face of Pakistani aggression. Washington will pursue its national interests as it deems fit, and thus, will not feel obliged to support India because of shared democratic values or morality. Recently, a former American envoy to India, Kenneth Juster, stated that improved US-Pakistan ties may compel New Delhi to exercise caution in retaliating against Pakistan-backed terrorism. Pakistan believes that its current rapprochement with Washington and its current role in the US-Iran negotiations will insulate it from Indian retaliation in the event of a conflict.

The possibility of the US withholding unconditional support for India in the face of Pakistani terrorism or aggression is not new. Since 1947, India’s response to Pakistani aggression conventionally and unconventional, has been conditioned by how much external and internal pressure the Indian governments have felt to retaliate against Pakistani aggression. Historically, Washington never extended automatic support to New Delhi following a Pakistani attack, regardless of whether the administration was Democrat or Republican.

In the 1965 war between India and Pakistan, the US suspended military supplies to both countries, even though Rawalpindi precipitated that conflict. India was not deterred from retaliating against Pakistani aggression, irrespective of American military supplies to Pakistan preceding the war. Pakistan procured military hardware to align itself with Washington against the Communist Soviet Union and, through its membership in various treaties such as the Middle East Defence Organisation (MEDO), the Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO), and the Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO). Washington, under the Johnson administration, took a neutral position in this war and did not construe Pakistan’s treaty membership as a license to attack India. If anything, Washington’s neutrality helped India, because Pakistan was more dependent on American military hardware.

During the 1971 India-Pakistan war, the US “tilted” in favour of Pakistan, a favour for Rawalpindi’s role in enabling the rapprochement between the US and China. The US even dispatched the USS Enterprise as part of the United States Navy’s (USN) Seventh Fleet to signal deterrence against any Indian attempt to expand military operations into West Pakistan. India’s military action on its western border was primarily defensive. As Henry Kissinger told Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in October 1971: “It is our judgment that the Indians see in this situation no longer a legal problem of East Pakistan but an opportunity to settle the whole problem of Pakistan [including West] which they have never accepted.” Yet American intervention on behalf of Pakistan in this case was irrelevant to the outcome of the conflict.


In the 1970s, Pakistan embarked on an “orographic offensive,” coupled with “cartographic confusion,” claiming that the entirety of the Saltoro Ridge, which includes the Siachen Glacier, was part of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). Pakistan dispatched mountaineering expeditions across the glacier, and American maps from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Pentagon showed the Saltoro Ridge to be a part of Pakistan. Washington, in this instance, tacitly accepted Rawalpindi’s cartographic warfare. In any case, Washington’s support was also a quid pro quo for Pakistan’s involvement in training and arming the Mujahideen, who were fighting against the Soviet Union’s invasion and occupation of Afghanistan beginning in 1979. Concerned by these developments, the Indian Army (IA) launched “Operation Meghdoot” under orders from the Indira Gandhi government. India was able to secure the most tactically advantageous positions on the Saltoro Ridge, which it continues to hold today.

Similarly, following the outbreak of the 1999 Kargil war, the Clinton administration did not extend automatic support to India. While Washington recognised Pakistan’s responsibility for initiating the conflict, it was concerned about India’s decision to escalate vertically to reverse Pakistan’s territorial seizure, as it was about the origins of the conflict. Washington’s position evolved as the conflict progressed, with the Americans reluctantly aligning with India because the latter threatened to escalate the conflict.


The 2001-2002 crisis led to a massive military mobilisation by India against Pakistan following the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT)—a Pakistani terror outfit’s attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001. The aim was to coerce and compel Pakistan to shut down its terror training camps, which Rawalpindi promised to do. This crisis, however, eventually led India to back down from attacking Pakistan due to American pressure. Further, India chose to exercise restraint despite opportunities to strike across the Line of Control (LoC) and the International Border (IB) with Pakistan in early 2002; however, delays in kinetic action, shifting demands, and poor civil-military alignment on New Delhi’s part compounded its problems as the crisis progressed. Washington, which was by now in the middle of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) as a result of the 9/11 terror attacks, would not countenance an Indian attack on Pakistan.

Pakistan was roped in as a frontline non-NATO ally to fight the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and India’s military mobilisation was threatening American objectives in Afghanistan. Consequently, Pakistani military resources that were needed against Al Qaeda terrorists fleeing from Afghanistan were diverted to defend against India. Once the US saw its interests directly jeopardised, New Delhi had no choice but to demobilise. If anything, the US brought compelling pressure to bear against New Delhi, including a travel advisory warning Americans not to travel to the subcontinent. This was only the second occasion, after the 1971 war, that Indian and American interests were opposed to each other. Otherwise, for the US, South Asia has been a tertiary or secondary theatre to its larger geopolitical goals.

In the aftermath of the 26/11 attacks, Washington again pressured India not to retaliate against Pakistan. The Indian government obliged under American duress not to respond militarily, although, internally, too, there was resistance against a military response, which was likely the primary reason for Indian restraint.

It is after the 2019 Pulwama attack that India retaliated with airstrikes against the JeM terror camp in Balakot in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. On this occasion, India, for the first time since the 1971 war, struck targets inside Pakistan. Yet Washington was not outrightly opposed to an Indian response. Indeed, President Trump even went to the extent of saying in the run-up to the Indian Air Force (IAF)’ Balakot strikes that India was considering action that was “….very strong…So I can understand that also.”


Six years later, the Pahalgam terror attack in April 2025 compelled India to launch air strikes inside Pakistan. These strikes were the most extensive since the 1971 war, as Pakistani terrorist training camps in Muridke and Bahawalpur were struck by the IAF. U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance said about the fighting between India and Pakistan in May 2025, it was “none of our business”, and the only thing the US was pursuing was back-channel diplomacy to defuse hostilities. Yet, it was Pakistan, after suffering heavy losses, that sought a ceasefire on May 10, 2025, which India accepted. Pakistan, however, declared that President Trump deserved all the credit, which he readily accepted and continues to claim.

Implications for India

It is evident that US policy following the outbreak of an India-Pakistan conflict has varied considerably over the last 80 years: neutrality between the belligerents; outright opposition to India; tacit accommodation of, and gradual alignment with, Pakistan; reluctant alignment with India; sympathy and empathy for India; and, finally, helplessness in defusing hostilities. In each instance, Washington’s mixed positions on India-Pakistan conflicts have reflected its interests. Despite playing the role of a conduit between Iran and the US today, Pakistan must not construe this as a quid pro quo that permits it to overplay its hand against India. This is why New Delhi has to remind both Rawalpindi and Washington that it will not hesitate to retaliate to any provocations.

About the author: Kartik Bommakanti is a Senior Fellow with the Strategic Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation.

Source: This article was published by the Observer Research Foundation.

Baloch Strike After Talks Stall: Gwadar’s Security Crisis Deepens – OpEd

Gwadar city, Balochistan, Pakistan. Photo Credit: Shayhaq Baloch, Wikipedia Commons

April 22, 2026 
By Ashu Mann


Strategic projects are supposed to be measured in decades. Roads take years to build. Ports take longer to fill. Diplomatic relationships require sustained investment over time. China, better than most, has been willing to play the long game in Balochistan — absorbing setbacks, extending timelines, and repeating that CPEC and Gwadar remain strategic priorities. April 2026 has tested that patience in two distinct and serious ways.

The China-mediated trilateral talks between Pakistan and Afghanistan, held in Urumqi from April 1 to 7, concluded without a ceasefire or any verifiable commitments on the TTP. Both sides exchanged diplomatic language — pledging to “refrain from actions that escalate the situation” and to “explore a comprehensive solution” — but the fundamental disagreement remained intact: Pakistan demanding verifiable Taliban action against TTP militants operating from Afghan soil, the Taliban refusing any arrangement that implies external oversight of its territory.

China described the process as “substantive” and said it would continue, but the talks produced no mechanism for enforcement and no agreement on the core issue. Then, on April 12, BLA fighters using a speedboat attacked a Pakistan Coast Guard patrol boat on a routine patrol near Jiwani, killing all three personnel on board.

The BLA claimed the operation under its newly announced naval wing, the Hammal Maritime Defence Force — a formal declaration that the insurgency has extended its theatre from land and air into the sea. It was the first maritime attack of its kind in the region. Both events strike directly at Gwadar’s viability: one cutting at the diplomatic foundations of the port’s regional purpose, the other introducing a new military threat to the waters surrounding it.

The long game China has been playing requires certain conditions to hold. Regional stability, at least at a functional level, is one. Some degree of Pakistani state capacity to manage the security environment is another. Progress, however slow, in Baloch-Pakistan relations is a third. None of these conditions are being met adequately right now. Pakistani-Afghan relations are at their worst point in years, frozen by the February strikes and the failure of the Urumqi talks to produce any binding thaw. Pakistani security forces are capable but stretched, now confronting a threat that has extended from land through the air — the BLA launched a drone unit earlier this year — and now to sea.

Baloch communities remain alienated from CPEC’s development model, and the group that channels that alienation into violence has just demonstrated a significant expansion of its operational reach. For Beijing, recalibrating timelines is manageable. Recalibrating the fundamental strategic logic is harder. The Urumqi outcome is worth dwelling on, because it exposes something about Chinese regional influence that BRI’s promotional literature tends to obscure. China’s economic leverage over Pakistan is substantial and real. But leverage is not unlimited.

When Islamabad attends talks in Xinjiang, it does so partly because Beijing asks and partly because Pakistan genuinely wants the TTP issue resolved — the two objectives align. That alignment has limits, however: Pakistan cannot accept an arrangement that provides only symbolic progress on TTP, because symbolic progress has not reduced violence in the past. China’s leverage over the Taliban is weaker and more transactional. Beijing is one of the few governments maintaining economic engagement with Kabul, and that provides some influence. But the Taliban’s primary audience is Afghan domestic opinion, and conceding to Pakistani demands under Chinese pressure is politically toxic in Kabul. No amount of Chinese economic inducement can easily change that calculus. The talks stalled because the conditions for a durable agreement do not currently exist, and Chinese mediation — however well-resourced — cannot manufacture conditions it cannot control.

The maritime attack changes the threat calculus in a specific and lasting way. Before April 12, the security challenge around Gwadar was serious but bounded: a land-based insurgency attacking infrastructure and personnel, supplemented more recently by drone strikes, requiring a defined land-and-air security response. That response was expensive and imperfect, but it had a recognisable shape. The BLA’s new naval wing changes that. Maritime insurgency requires maritime counterinsurgency — different equipment, different training, different intelligence architecture.

Pakistan does not have these in place for this environment. Building them takes time and resources that are already strained. In the interval before adequate maritime security capacity exists, the waters around Gwadar are operating in a threat environment without an adequate response. With diplomacy producing process but not outcomes, and the BLA demonstrating that its reach now spans land, air, and sea, Gwadar is under pressure from multiple directions simultaneously. The port’s future depends on conditions that none of the relevant parties are currently in a position to deliver.

Ashu Mann is an Associate Fellow at the Centre for Land Warfare Studies. He was awarded the Vice Chief of the Army Staff Commendation card on Army Day 2025. He is pursuing a PhD from Amity University, Noida, in Defence and Strategic Studies. His research focuses include the India-China territorial dispute, great power rivalry, and Chinese foreign policy.

How To Lose A Country In Four Years: A Taliban Regime Guide – OpEd

Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. Photo Credit: Mehr News Agency

April 22, 2026 
By Farwa Imtiaz


Four years after seizing control in 2021, the Taliban regime is not consolidating control, it is unraveling from within. Far from the “peace and stability” they promised, Afghanistan today is a pressure cooker of human rights abuses, economic despair, and simmering popular resistance. Recent reports from Human Rights Watch, the UN, and a bombshell BBC investigation paint a damning picture, a regime so paranoid and brittle that it responds to discontent not with reform, but with ever-harsher crackdowns. The result is exactly what the Taliban’s own leader feared, internal rot that is eroding their legitimacy and fueling the very opposition they claim to have defeated.

The cruel and misogynistic nature of the regime is no clearer than in its relentless efforts to subjugate women and girls through what the UN and other international experts have rightly termed gender apartheid. From 2021, the Taliban prohibited girls from attending secondary and higher education facilities, stopped women from engaging in most professions, required them to remain in their homes without being accompanied by men, and implemented an oppressive dress code regime meted out through public lashings and detentions. In the year 2025 alone, UN experts highlighted an uptick in these repressive measures, including sexual assault in detention centers and crackdowns on women who wear their hijabs incorrectly. The People’s Tribunal concluded in December 2025 that the Taliban committed crimes against humanity, including gender persecution and apartheid.

This apartheid along the lines of gender is not merely one outrage among others; rather, it is economic suicide. The economy of Afghanistan, even before this time, has been severely impacted by sanctions and the cutoff of aid from the international community, and it is now in a state of collapse. In late 2025, according to the United Nations Development Programme, nine out of ten Afghan families are going hungry or are selling off what little assets they have left in order to survive.

Adding to their woes, the paranoia of the Taliban leadership escalated to an all-time high in September 2025 when a blanket internet and mobile data ban was declared across the country; the first such ban since 2021. Under the pretext of curbing “immoral activities,” the ban (issued from Kandahar) effectively brought all aspects of life to a halt, be it financial transactions, education, trade, or the response to the devastating earthquakes that hit eastern Afghanistan.

Yet ordinary Afghans refuse to stay silent. In Balkh province, people are turning public walls into canvases of defiance, spray-painting graffiti demanding education, rights, and freedom. These acts of artistic resistance, risking arrest and worse, echo the courage of exiled artists like Shamsia Hassani and Fatima Wojohat, whose work continues to amplify the cry for justice. Such quiet rebellion signals a population no longer cowed.

Increasingly open resistance is emerging. Funeral processions for resistance martyrs have become symbols of defiance, attracting many participants who the Taliban find difficult to subdue. These funeral processions are more than just an expression of grief, but an act of remembering and mobilizing against a government that kills its opponents and then bars males from attending the funerals.

The Taliban’s response to all this? Not concessions, but intensified control. Instead of addressing grievances, they double down on repression, more bans, more arrests, more floggings. This is a textbook failure of governance, and it perfectly illustrates why their authority is collapsing.

Thomas Hobbes warned in Leviathan that the social contract between ruler and ruled rests on the state’s ability to deliver security and order in exchange for obedience. When a government fails to protect its people from poverty, arbitrary violence, and systemic exclusion, when it becomes the source of their misery, the contract dissolves. Afghans owe no loyalty to a regime that starves them, imprisons their daughters, and silences their voices. Legitimacy is not seized by force; it is earned by results. The Taliban regime have delivered neither.

Add to this the psychological factor of the frustration-aggression theory, where the systematic denial of basic rights, education, livelihood, work, self-respect, and economic opportunities can lead to aggression. It was none other than the Taliban leader himself, Hibatullah Akhundzada, who unwittingly validated this when his speech was leaked by the BBC from January 2025 in Kandahar. He mentioned that internal divisions in their ranks might “collapse and end” the emirate. As shown in its report, BBC uncovered this split wherein the hardline Taliban faction from Kandahar advocated for complete isolation, whereas the Kabul-based moderate Taliban defied the orders and brought back the internet connection after 2025.

The Taliban are architects of their own demise. By choosing gender apartheid over inclusion, economic sabotage over recovery, digital blackouts over connectivity, and crackdowns over dialogue, they have forfeited any claim to rule. Graffiti in Balkh, resistance in the hills, funerals that double as protests, these are the early tremors of a nation that has had enough.

It is time that the international community stops trying to engage with the Taliban regime in order to try to change its ways. The regime’s legitimacy has been lost even among its own population. All that is left to be seen is how much damage it will cause before being dragged down by the very social contract that it broke.


Farwa Imtiaz is an independent academic researcher with Masters in Peace and Conflict Studies from National Defence University, Pakistan. Her areas of interest include Conflict Analysis, Geopolitical Realities, Climate Change, and International Affairs. Her work is Published on The Friday times, Paradigm Shift, Policy Wire, South Asia Times, Voice of Germany, Global Connectivities, Stratheia, International Policy Journal, South Asia Journal, and Sri Lanka Guardian.

Why Pakistan’s Afghan Policy Reached A Breaking Point – OpEd

April 22, 2026 
By Shafaq Zernab


The ongoing war between Pakistan and Afghanistan is the result of a gradually worsening security situation along the Durand Line rather than a sudden strategic shift. The core issue was not the absence of dialogue, but its inability to deliver binding results to the foremost security concern of for Pakistan: the use of Afghan territory by militant groups to attack Pakistan. When Pakistan in response switched to cross-border strikes in February 2026, the state had already gone through several years of attempted accommodation without securing any meaningful restraint from the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) by Kabul.


Contrary to the global perception of treating Afghanistan as a client state, Pakistan’s initial response after the Afghan Taliban’s takeover in August 2021 was, in fact, guarded and restrained. The immediate political aims of Islamabad concerning the fledgling Taliban government were to facilitate a stable transition, and prevent Afghanistan from falling into a new civil war. Pakistan also sought to safeguard its western border against militant spillovers and Indian ingress, and maintain the prospect of regional connectivity via Afghanistan to Central Asia. These objectives aligned with Pakistan’s cautious stance at the time, as earlier outbursts of unrest in Afghanistan had already demonstrated how easily instability across the border turned into a refugee crisis, contrabands, and even terrorism in Pakistan.

Pakistan’s Afghanistan policy still had an inherited assumption that historical contact, sectarian and tribal linkages, geographic interdependence, and the language of ‘brotherhood’ will yield reciprocal Afghan sensitivity to the fundamental security interests of Pakistan, but it did not. Contrary to what many believed in Islamabad, the Taliban were never ideologically oriented towards Pakistan. Engagement was conditional and interest-based. The socio-economic power structure of Afghan society is fundamentally neo-patrimonial in nature, where institutions exist but power continues to flow through personalities (warlords/ tribal chiefs), patronage networks, and armed militia. External players have historically exerted influence in Afghanistan by investing and militarizing the respective factions, and those power structures, in turn, dictated the central Afghan governing authority. These structures do not respond to sentiments; they are responsive to resources, incentives, and coercive balance. India identified these patronage structures before Pakistan did. Instead of relying on presumed affinity, India employed aid, infrastructure, and political access to consolidate its influence across several Afghan nodes. Since 2001, India has invested approximately $3 billion in Afghanistan. By the end of 2025, New Delhi also announced the re-opening of its embassy in Kabul.

Meanwhile, Pakistan had exhausted multiple non-military options since the Taliban took over. The pattern showed how Pakistan moved from concern, to negotiation to mediation. However, the negotiations collapsed due to contentious demands of parties, including the Durand Line issue, TTA’s refusal to hand over TTP leaders to Pakistan, and TTP’s demands to reverse the FATA merger. The trust further deteriorated as escalation persisted even during negotiations.

In parallel, the terrorist incidents surged in Pakistan, making it the most affected country in the world with a record 45 per cent increase in 2024 as per the Global Terrorism Index. The decisive moment came in February 2026 when a series of high-impact incidents, including the Bajaur checkpoint attack, the Bannu convoy bombing, and a suicide attack on a mosque in Islamabad, compelled Pakistan to take kinetic action. Pakistan carried out intelligence-based limited airstrikes on TTP infrastructure (militant bases such as centres associated with leaders like Maulvi Abbas and Mullah Rahbar) in Nangarhar, Khost, and Paktika on 21-22 February.


26 February 2025 marked the start of direct confrontation between Taliban and Pakistan when the Afghan forces attacked border posts in Pakistan and also severed trade ties. On 27 February, Pakistan declared an ‘open war’ with Afghanistan by launching operation Ghazab Lil-Haq, targeting 313 Corps in Kabul, the Tarawo training camp in Kandahar, and the Sher-e-Nau camp in Paktia, along with other targets. The operational logic was clear: since militant forces operate within an enabling ecosystem, hitting forward cells would not be enough. The campaign was thus augmented to command and control, training, ammunition depots, and logistical nodes, which eventually compelled the Afghan Taliban to call for a ceasefire. As a result, terror incidents significantly reduced during this period. Pakistan thus transitioned from risk management to dealing with the environment from which the risk originated.

While the operation has yielded significant tactical gains, the limitations of force as a standalone instrument cannot be disregarded. The war imposed a staggering cost on Pakistan, which is not trivial for an economy whose foreign-exchange reserves are constantly under strain. But the reasoning of the current coercive stance is that the cost of sustained terrorist incursions would be ever greater. A frontier vulnerable to militants erodes sovereignty, discourages investment, and connectivity initiatives like CPEC, and places Pakistan in a perennially reactive position. Similarly, with the humanitarian condition worsening in Afghanistan, war is not the optimal choice. Since the issue is both geographical and territorial, it brings the discussion to its most critical point.

Coercion alone cannot offer a lasting resolution, unless it is linked to a political framework premised on four factors. Since TTA ideologically coincides with TTP, they can accommodate them according to custom; Kabul has to bear sovereign responsibility to ensure that the TTP does not use Afghan soil to wage war against Pakistan. This flexibility is crucial to alleviate worsening humanitarian conditions in Afghanistan. Second, Pakistan must shift from episodic signalling to a steady Afghanistan policy (debated in Parliament) to curtail Indian influence against Pakistan through confidence-building measures and border management. Third, a monitoring system of credible regional powers such as China, Qatar, or Turkey should be established to ensure compliance. Fourth, economic incentives, such as phased reopening of trade, access to transit routes, revenue-sharing, and refugee management, can also strengthen the commitment to adherence. It is paramount for Pakistan and Afghanistan to have a stable relationship. Pakistan requires a western frontier that is not a platform of anti-state violence, and Afghanistan requires market access, transit, and at least a non-hostile neighbourhood in order to get out of isolation and frailty. The key is to seek a political settlement not on the basis of sentiment, but reciprocity, verification, and uniform state policy.



Shafaq Zernab is a Reseach Assistant at the Cnter for Aerospace and Security Studies, Islamabad.

 The Islamabad Pivot and the Rise of the Global South’s Diplomatic Order

Imran Khalid

 April 21, 2026

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Islamabad’s verdant cityscape merges with the Margalla Hills. Ali Mujtaba – CC BY-SA 4.0

The collapse of the U.S.-Iran talks in Islamabad this week, followed swiftly by Washington’s announcement of a maritime blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, has been widely framed as a return to the familiar patterns of the maximum pressure era. Yet, to view these events solely through the lens of a bilateral failure is to miss a more profound structural shift in global diplomacy. Although the negotiations may have stalled after 21 hours of grueling deliberation between JD Vance and Abbas Araghchi, the venue and the process revealed a significant reality: the center of gravity for international dispute resolution is moving away from the West.

For decades, major diplomatic breakthroughs in the Middle East were synonymous with American soil or European capitals. From Camp David to the Green Tree Accord, the script was predictable: the United States acted as the indispensable mediator, providing the security guarantees and the economic carrots to bring parties to the table. However, the Islamabad talks represent a departure from this historical monopoly. By choosing a South Asian capital as the primary corridor for high-stakes engagement, the international community has effectively recognized a new Islamabad Blueprint defined by Global South mediation rather than Western dictate.

In this current geopolitical climate, the effectiveness of a superpower is no longer measured by its ability to coerce but by its capacity to collaborate. As the Islamabad Blueprint suggests, the future of global stability rests on the shoulders of those who choose the hard work of mediation over the easy path of confrontation. Pakistan’s recent efforts to facilitate a second round of talks underscore this shift. Islamabad is not merely providing a room; it is providing a regional legitimacy that Washington can no longer manufacture on its own.

The failure to reach a deal in Islamabad is being blamed on what Iranian officials describe as excessive demands from the U.S. delegation. Specifically, the insistence on widening the scope of the talks to include non-nuclear regional issues at the eleventh hour suggests a lack of the flexibility required for modern diplomacy. In contrast, the role played by Pakistan, supported quietly by China, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, focused on a more pragmatic, incremental approach. This group sought to establish a stability anchor based on shared economic interests, particularly the security of energy corridors that are vital to the developing world.

The contrast in methodology is striking. The U.S. approach remains rooted in a zero-sum logic of sanctions and blockades. Within 12 hours of the talks’ dissolution, the White House shifted toward a policy of intercepting vessels. This is a tactic that ignores the changed economic landscape of 2026. Today, a blockade is not merely a military maneuver; it is a direct assault on the energy security of neutral nations across Asia and Africa. By weaponizing the sea lanes, Washington is inadvertently accelerating the very trend it fears most: the transition to a multipolar financial system where the petrodollar is no longer the sole arbiter of trade.

The economic fallout of this rigid unilateralism is already visible. As oil prices climb again toward $100 per barrel following the blockade announcement, the America First strategy is increasingly becoming America Alone. By treating the Strait of Hormuz as a chessboard for containment rather than a global artery, Washington risks alienating the very allies it needs to maintain a coherent international order. The Global South sees this not as a defense of freedom of navigation but as an act of economic piracy that prioritizes tactical leverage over global stability.

China’s role in this evolving landscape is particularly instructive. Unlike the transactional nature of the Western approach, Beijing has spent the last year fostering what it calls a community of shared future. While the United States remains preoccupied with naval destroyers and sanctions lists, China has focused on building infrastructure and technological resilience. The recent deployment of embodied AI for high-risk industrial tasks in the region is a case in point. It serves as a reminder that while one power is looking to close corridors, the other is looking to build the systems that make those corridors more efficient and safe.

This is the essence of the new diplomatic reality. The Islamabad Blueprint signifies that the Global South is no longer content to be a passive theater for great power competition. Countries in the region are now active stakeholders, providing the neutral ground and the creative frameworks necessary for dialogue. Even if the current ceasefire—slated to expire on April 22—is fragile, the fact that the United Staters felt compelled to negotiate in Islamabad, rather than forcing the Iranians to meet in a European capital, is a concession to this new order.

The world is headed toward a pluralistic diplomatic ecosystem. In this new world, the legitimacy of mediators is derived from their ability to provide stability and development, not just their capacity to exert military force. As Washington returns to its toolkit of blockades, it may find that the rest of the world has already moved on, seeking security in the new corridors of the East.

The lesson of the last few days is not that peace is impossible, but that the old ways of achieving it are increasingly obsolete. The Islamabad talks, despite their current impasse, have shown that a new group of mediators is ready to fill the vacuum left by the West’s retreat into unilateralism. For the global community, the task now is to ensure that these new diplomatic pathways are strengthened, providing a much-needed alternative to the cycle of pressure and conflict that has dominated the last century. If the Islamabad Process can survive this week’s naval posturing, it may yet provide the definitive map for a post-unipolar world.

This first appeared on FPIF.

Imran Khalid is a geostrategic analyst and columnist on international affairs. His work has been widely published by prestigious international news organizations and publications.

Pakistan: How a regional warmonger came to host US-Iran peace talks

By Farooq Sulehria

Published 20 April, 2026

Mainstream Pakistan is basking in (self)glory. As host of the US-Iran negotiations — rumours of a second-round abuzz — Islamabad is upbeat. From talk show hosts to YouTube influencers, the one-dimensional message is clear: Pakistan has finally been assigned the role it deserves in the global hierarchy.

International Relations (IR) academics, otherwise considered irrelevant by the know-all legacy media, are dotting the screens and op-eds. Perhaps one of these IR scholars introduced the media to Giovanni Botero’s 16th century notion of a “middle power.” In any event, the urban middle classes and Twitterrati have enthusiastically embraced Botero’s otherwise vague concept.

That traditional rival India is not just absent in the negotiations but burning with jealousy is the icing on the cake for the media, the chauvinistic middle classes and, of course, the state managers. In my opinion, this is the second most important “moment of glory” for the country’s ruling class, since hosting the Islamic Summit in 1974. However, this time around, it is an event of an even bigger consequence.

The question, however, remains: what has catapulted Islamabad, temporarily at least, to the status of “global peacemaker”, Scandinavian-style? The India-Pakistan conflict in May last year apparently endeared the Pakistani leadership to United States President Donald Trump. Yet, this is an inadequate explanation.

Foreign policy as bread and butter

Pakistan is a country that survives and thrives on foreign policy. The Pakistani ruling class learnt the art of banking on and cashing in geostrategic benefits, whenever an opportunity presented itself, back during the Cold War. Back then, they grasped the diplomatic art of balancing relations between rival powers. For example, Pakistan has friendly relations with China and the US. In 1970, Pakistan facilitated secret Sino-US negotiations, paving the way for diplomatic relations. However, Pakistan has also, on occasions, annoyed both the powers.

Pakistan is hosting the present peace talks only 150 kilometres from Abbottabad, where Osama bin Laden was hunted down on May 2, 2011. Several Taliban commanders and their families, post-9/11, were also residing in Islamabad, a stone’s throw from the US embassy. Beijing has its own grievances against Pakistan. The biggest Chinese resentment, presently, is Islamabad’s attempt to hinder China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) project in Pakistan. The deadly attacks on Chinese nationals employed in huge Chinese projects have at times driven otherwise polite Communist Party of China bureaucrats to publicly reprimand Islamabad.

Likewise, since 1979, Pakistan has managed good relations with Riyadh as well as Tehran. But in each case, irritants and disagreements persist. Tehran has been unhappy over state-patronage lent to anti-Shia militant outfits, responsible for mass violence against Pakistan’s Shia citizens (there was spillover in Afghanistan too). In January, Iran fired missiles and sent drones to attack Pakistan’s Balochistan province. Pakistan, before announcing a truce, repaid in kind.

Mohammed bin Salman, likewise, was incensed by Islamabad’s refusal to dispatch Pakistani troops to fight in the “jihad” against “Houthi rebels” in 2015. Yet, on April 16, Pakistan’s prime minister, Shahbaz Sharif was warmly received by MBS. Shahbaz Sharif speaks broken-Arabic, largely to impress domestic audiences. He learnt Arabic when his family was exiled to Saudi Arabia by the military in 2001.

Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi welcomed Pakistan’s military czar Asim Munir to Teheran on April 16. As Pakistan is a garrison state, military chiefs have command over troops and civilian affairs. Munir’s visit received greater coverage in the Pakistani media than Sharif’s trip to Jeddah. There is a reason for this difference. Not unlike economy and politics, foreign policy also falls within the domain of Pakistan Army’s General Headquarters. Most importantly, the military (manpower, technology) is also Pakistan’s most important diplomatic manoeuvre and valuable export.

A clever client

Pakistan is a client state, but a clever one. It is one thing whether their policies benefit Pakistani citizens, but state managers have successfully peddled their international interests. Owing to their ability to stay effective internationally, they have gained and maintained access to global and regional corridors of power. This access can apparently be explained by a lucky mix of history and geography (more below). During the recent Israeli-US war on Iran, they successfully deployed this as self-interest was involved.

For the past several days, there have been power cuts every second hour. This is because electricity is largely produced from imported oil. Sectarian tensions are another headache for the ruling class. The attacks on the US consulate in Karachi on March 1, in the wake of Iranian leader Ali Khamenei’s assassination, and the large-scale unrest in Gilgit-Baltistan have made global headlines. However, the sectarian aspect went missing in the global and local coverage, for understandable reasons. The attack on the US Consulate was mounted by Shia youth, while Gilgit-Baltistan is a Shia-dominated region (though not all Shia belong to the Ithna Ashari branch).

Given a near-universal anti-Americanism and widespread dislike for Israel, support for Iran during the month-long invasion cut across the sectarian divide. Field Marshal Munir summoned top Shia clerics to warn against any further agitation. His advice to clerics who preferred Iran over Pakistan’s national interests was to “migrate to Iran”. Though his advice was justifiably censured, Munir’s warning was indicative of the ruling elite’s worries.

Meantime, every missile Iran fired at the Gulf sheikhdoms unnerved Islamabad. While Pakistan cannot annoy Tehran, it can hardly afford the wrath of Arab Sultans either. After China, the Gulf states (collectively) are Pakistan’s largest lenders, if one takes into account Pakistan’s bilateral debt. Equally important are the millions of Pakistanis working in the Gulf states, who constitute the largest source of remittances. This diaspora in the Arabian Peninsula, often working in slave-like conditions, keeps the Pakistani economy afloat.

Ironically, while Pakistan was playing the role of peacemaker internationally, China was hosting a week-long round of talks between Kabul and Islamabad, and relations with India remain fraught. Pakistan is neither a peace-maker by ideology or necessity. The Pakistani state’s ideological basis rests on an enmity with India. Present tensions with Kabul are partly an extension of this India-centric approach. Islamabad is furious that the Taliban regime has been cosying up to New Delhi (among other factors). Pakistan may seek to play the role of peacemaker globally but regionally it acts as a warmonger.

Roots of cleverness

Balancing powerful global or regional rivals is not a specifically Pakistani achievement. There are other case studies of a client state pleasing competing patrons. However, the specificity of the Pakistani elite is the fact that they manage it all this time. What explains this clever “ability”?

A combination of the following factors has allowed the ruling clique to perform as a clever client.

• The state’s garrison character. In a democracy, even when it is highly flawed, a ruling dispensation can not afford unpopular decisions. Foreign policy makers in Pakistan, however, are not answerable to any electorate.
• Pakistan has a military equipped with nuclear capacity. While Pakistan has sent troops to the Gulf states, its top nuclear scientists have helped Iran and Libya build their nuclear programs.

Pakistan foreign policy scholars usually refer to Pakistan’s geography and the Cold War as an explanation for its foreign policy. On the contrary, the state’s character is the defining factor. A Pakistani state with a different ideology or dispensation would have behaved differently, despite geography.

The claim that Pakistan survives and thrives via its foreign policy is made from the ruling classes’ viewpoint. From the citizens’ perspective, Pakistan’s foreign policy failures are damningly visible when it comes to the neighbourhood. For instance, the post-9/11 policy of running with the hare (Taliban) and hunting with the hound (Washington) turned Pakistan into “Terroristan”. The wave of terror that swept Pakistan after September 11 claimed more than 70,000 lives. The blowback, in the form of the Pakistani Taliban, continues to claim hundreds of lives annually even now.

It is, likewise, a huge failure of diplomacy if a state can not live peacefully with its neighbours, as is Pakistan’s case. While peace with all four neighbours is vital and desirable, it is not on the horizon in the case of India (and Afghanistan) for two reasons. First, as highlighted above, Pakistan identifies itself ideologically as India’s nemesis. Pakistan has no plans to shed this identity anytime soon. Second, the Hindu fundamentalist BJP presently ruling India, with an almost unchallenged hegemonic hold over Indian society, also thrives on anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistan politics. Hence, the outlook is not optimistic for the foreseeable future.

Most importantly, by facilitating these peace talks, the hybrid regime in Pakistan is no doubt building itself a good image that will help legitimise it, even if it was a product of rigged elections. The better image it has internationally, the more repressive it is likely to be domestically.

Farooq Sulehria is the editor of Pakistan’s Foreign Policy and Strategic Relations in the Twenty-First Century, forthcoming for Palgrave Macmillan.