PUBLISHED on November 2, 2025
The latest round of negotiations held in Istanbul, Türkiye, from October 25 to 30, 2025, between the Afghan Taliban and Islamabad ended with a provisional understanding to implement the ceasefire agreed earlier in Qatar. More technical details of the provisional understanding will be discussed in the next round of talks starting on November 6, 2025. The international mediation and continued dialogue over the past few weeks bodes well; However, the prospects for a successful dialogue and resolution of the conflict between Islamabad and the Afghan Taliban remain slim and unpredictable.
It is mainly due to the deterioration of bilateral relations between the two neighbors since August 2021. Before Türkiye and Qatar, China also made an effort to give peace between the two neighbors a chance in a series of trilateral talks, but in vain. There are four main factors that make peace efforts between the two actors inherently fragile, thus decreasing the likelihood of a sustainable peace.
Firstly, Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban lack a shared understanding or a unified stance on their main point of contention: the issue of terrorism and the Taliban’s support for Fitna al Khwarj (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Fitna al Hindustan (Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA).
Since 2021, Islamabad has continued to urge Kabul to take decisive action against the TTP and BLA, citing the groups’ role in exacerbating Pakistan’s security challenges, especially in the tribal border regions and Balochistan province. In contrast, the Afghan Taliban claim that they do not exercise any control over either TTP or BLA.
Especially, they have a weak side for the TTP, given their shared religious ideology and their decades-long historical experience as insurgent movements. For these groups, the use of force – including acts of violence and terrorism – is often perceived as a legitimate tool to assert their authority over the target population. This fundamental divergence in perspectives on the central issue significantly undermines the prospects for any substantive and lasting resolution to the conflict between Kabul and Islamabad.
“The Afghan Taliban claim that they do not exercise any control over either the TTP or the BLA. They especially have a weak side for the TTP, given their shared religious ideology and their decades of historical experience as insurgent movements.”
Secondly, ideally, the dialogue that began in 2025 after a deadly conflict between the two countries would have started in 2021, when the Afghan Taliban assumed power and the TTP, emboldened by the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, reactivated its operations and intensified terrorist activities in Pakistan.
Most importantly, both neighbors needed to engage at different levels and platforms to negotiate various issues of mutual interest, such as border security and management, refugee repatriation, counterterrorism, and TTP relocation from Afghanistan.
The prolonged delay and lack of will in that engagement between Kabul and Islamabad has further deepened the pre-existing trust deficit, a historical feature of Pakistan-Afghanistan relations largely rooted in the issue of Kabul’s irredentist claims on the Durand Line. Instead of addressing the realities on the ground and the sources of the trust deficit, both sides resorted to mutual accusations and blame shifting.
Consequently, these belated diplomatic efforts, following years of mistrust, will require significant time and commitment to rebuild trust, particularly at the grassroots level, where communities on both sides of the border express a genuine desire for conflict resolution and confidence-building measures.
A third important factor shaping Pakistan-Afghanistan relations is the complex geopolitical environment, particularly India’s recent efforts to cultivate friendly ties with the Taliban regime in Kabul. Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Muttaqi’s visit to New Delhi in October 2025 has been seen by many as an Indian effort to diplomatically isolate Pakistan and create a two-front challenge that could strain Islamabad’s strategic position and capabilities.
The broader South Asia region, and Afghanistan in particular, already faces serious socio-economic difficulties and political uncertainties, and any such geopolitical maneuver by India and the Afghan Taliban may further destabilize the region, which would have serious development and human security implications.
It is imperative that India recognizes the fact that provoking the diplomatically and politically inexperienced Taliban will not limit the resulting conflict and its repercussions to Afghanistan and Pakistan only; rather, it will create long-term regional consequences that all South Asian states will have to bear.
Finally, peacebuilding, negotiation and conflict resolution require that all parties possess both the political will and the diplomatic capacity to engage constructively. In the case of the Afghan Taliban, they seem to lack both. Its close association with the TTP and other militant and insurgent groups undermines its willingness to confront and resolve the conflict with Pakistan, particularly given that the core of the dispute lies in the Islamic Emirate’s continued logistical and political support for the TTP and the BLA.
In terms of capacity, Taliban leaders also suffer from limited diplomatic exposure and training. The Taliban’s political office in Qatar had previously demonstrated a degree of political maturity due to its sustained exposure and engagement with the international community that resulted in the 2020 peace agreement between the United States and the Taliban.
“Most importantly, both neighbors needed to engage at different levels and platforms to negotiate various issues of mutual interest, such as border security and management, refugee repatriation, counterterrorism and the relocation of the TTP from Afghanistan.”
However, once the Taliban rank and file returned to power, they sidelined the leadership of the Qatar office, thus leaving its members with little influence over major Taliban decisions. The prominent role of Mullah Yaqoob – former Taliban commander and current Taliban Defense Minister – in the first round of negotiations in Qatar indicated that the Taliban were approaching this issue from a position of power and not with the element of diplomatic and political will and maturity, a factor that further diminishes the prospects of a negotiated settlement for Pakistan and Afghanistan.
It is imperative to consider these four critical factors when seeking any substantive and sustainable solution to the conflict between Kabul and Islamabad. In this context, Türkiye and Qatar, as influential mediators, can play a critical role in persuading the Afghan Taliban to recognize the serious humanitarian consequences of a protected conflict for the Afghan population, who are already enduring one of the most serious humanitarian crises in the world, marked by restricted access to livelihood opportunities, an unfolding climate disaster, food insecurity, and gender apartheid.
Sadia Sulaiman is an assistant professor at the Center for Regional Studies for Africa, North and South America, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.
