Warning: Militancy in Afghanistan Threatens Us All

2026-02-10 - 14:16

By: Kathy Gannon Another brutal suicide attack in Pakistan, this time carried out in the capital Islamabad, on Friday by the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP). It should frighten us all and wake up a hapless West to the extreme folly of its failed strategy in Afghanistan and in this region. But that is unlikely to happen because the victims are Pakistanis, Shiite worshippers gathered to pray. While western countries, particularly the United States, do not have solutions, they do have the ability to pull Afghanistan out of its isolation, and return the country to the community of nations, re-open its embassies, allowing greater access to understand better the depth to which space is being overtaken by militancy, to understand better the partnerships, the alliances. Additionally, it would offer a better understanding of the deeply complicated regional dynamics and the escalating security concerns. Sadly, nuanced foreign policy is not America’s strength, which despite its mindboggling ineptness, still dictates the foreign policies of most western nations, or those allied to the United States, which means until America returns to Afghanistan, none will return. United States isolated the Taliban when they were last in power in 1996 opening space to militants, leaving much of the country in darkness to the outside world. The result was 9/11. In keeping with America’s propensity to ignore history, its mistakes and its failings, it again isolated the Taliban, when they returned to power in 2021. Today, a cacophony of militant groups are growing in number, conducting recruitment campaigns, forming alliances, and—most concerning of all—they are being used by neighboring countries to undermine each other. Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan have all been involved in supporting militants to destabilize one another. Right now, Pakistan is paying the heaviest price. Since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, bringing a chaotic end to America’s longest war, Pakistan’s military has suffered regular attacks from Afghan based anti-Pakistan insurgents, most notably the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP. The South Asian Security Portal, says more than 3,200 Pakistani security forces have been killed and more than 2,000 civilians since 2021. Meanwhil,e successive United Nations monitoring reports have put the numbers of TTP in Afghanistan at around 10,000. The latest monitoring report, which was released late last year, warned of at least 20 international and regional militant groups operating in Afghanistan and flagged a recruitment drive by the Islamic State that reportedly brought in roughly 600 new recruits. The militant foothold is not limited to Afghanistan. They are also in areas of Pakistan where government control is weak, such as Mustung in the increasingly unstable and violent southwestern Baluchistan province. Last year, the Islamic state released a gruesome 36-minute video, which was widely circulated on social media, revealing its presence in Mustung and its alliances, albeit often temporary, with other insurgent groups in the area. The video was deeply significant because, while ISKP’s presence in Afghanistan is well documented, the video was the first confirmation of the ISKP operating in Pakistan’s restive southwestern Baluchistan province. Just two weeks ago Baluchistan was the site of a coordinated attack by the Afghan-based Baluchistan Liberation Army, with whom the video indicated ISKP had had an alliance. Dozens of civilians and military personnel were killed in that attack. Scores more insurgents were killed. Not unsurprisingly the release last year of the ISKP video was largely ignored. Its significance apparently, intentionally or unintentionally, overlooked. Since last May’s brief war between nuclear armed neighbors Pakistan and India, in which Pakistan scored some serious victory points, security in the region has been on a downward spiral. The neighborhood has become increasingly volatile and the neighbors increasingly belligerent, with Pakistan loudly and aggressively blaming India and Afghanistan for the multitude of attacks on its soil. Pakistan and Afghanistan have engaged in routine border skirmishes, escalating to a Pakistani bombing inside Afghan territory and the borders closed, more than they are open. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s longstanding enemy India has grown closer to Afghanistan, which is increasingly hostile, leaving Pakistan feeling squeezed, threatened and often under attack. The region is a complex landscape of shifting alliances among militant groups and neighboring states. Given Afghanistan’s pivotal role in these evolving dynamics, it is essential for Western countries—particularly the United States, which still maintains considerable influence—to return to Afghanistan to effectively monitor and understand these ongoing developments, rather than watch from a distance, and comfort of Doha, in the Middle Eastern state of Qatar. Pakistan’s belief that India, together with Afghanistan, is actively seeking to destabilize its territory risks an escalation in the fighting. In a region where the two neighbors possess nuclear weapons, it is a risk no one can afford. Today on the world stage Afghanistan is all but forgotten, but for an occasional mention of the fate of the tens of thousands of Afghans evacuated from their homeland in 2021 and left stranded, mostly in Pakistan, but also elsewhere. Allowing Afghanistan to be forgotten is a mistake. It was a mistake in 1996 and it is a mistake now. In August, 2001, less than one month before the 9/11 attacks in the United States, I spoke at a media gathering in New York. At that gathering I warned that the sanctions against the Taliban, the increasing poverty, and lack of international partners had increased space in Afghanistan and given authority to many unsavory groups and specifically mentioned Al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden, who by then was financing the Taliban’s defense budget. I warned that the isolation and growing influence of Pakistani, Saudi and other extremists, including Al Qaeda, was silencing other Afghan voices, dissenting voices, particularly among the Taliban, who wanted better for their country. The isolation also wrought changes among the Taliban. The Taliban leadership had become closely allied with bin Laden’s Arab fighters, a notable shift from the 1980s anti-Soviet war—during which Kandahari fighters, including those who became Taliban leaders, rarely accepted Arab fighters among them, though they were happy to take their financial support. At the end of my New York talk, a very senior media editor, who was smart and worldly asked : “But tell me Kathy why should we care? What does Afghanistan have to do with us?” A little more than a month later 9/11 occurred. The U.S. was blindsided. Just last week, after an extended conversation with a Western diplomat during which I spoke at length about how isolating the Taliban—a strategy that failed in 1996—has negatively affected Afghanistan, including deteriorating conditions for women and girls, increased opportunities for militant groups, and urgent threats to regional stability, he asked, though I am paraphrasing: “Why should we get involved again in Afghanistan? With all the demands on our diminishing budgets, and our proliferating concerns, why should we spend our money reopening our embassies in Afghanistan? It would cost a lot of money.” More often than not, I wonder how it is possible the West is regarded as the so-called First World. In December 2001, the United States and the United Nations, together, installed in Afghanistan, the same collection of thugs, warlords and war criminals whose runaway corruption and bitter feuding during their previous time in power culminated in the Taliban’s first rule in 1996. Their return by the U.S. and U.N. was mindboggling. At the time I said to a friend who was then with Le Monde newspaper: “Watch, in 15 to 20 years, Afghanistan will have gone to hell in a handbasket and the international community will leave saying: “Look at those Afghans they have been fighting for 100s of years, how can we ever expect to help or understand them?’” Today I am struggling to understand, but it is not the Afghans. “The opinions expressed in this pirce are those of the author alone and do not represent position of Pakistan Observer.