Will the US and Pakistan join forces against the Taliban?
Pakistan has seen a dramatic increase in terror attacks over the past year, especially since the Islamist militant group Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) ended a months-long ceasefire with the Pakistani government.
The attacks, many of them carried out by the TTP, have targeted not only the South Asian nation’s military, police and intelligence services, but also polio workers and other civilians.
The TTP, commonly known as the Pakistani Taliban, is an umbrella group of militants that is a close ally of the Afghan Taliban, which seized power in neighboring Afghanistan in August 2021 when US and NATO troops were in the stages late in his withdrawal from the country after 20 years of war.
Many TTP leaders and fighters have found refuge and have been openly living in Afghanistan since the Taliban took power, which has emboldened the TTP.
Pakistani authorities criticized the team for launching attacks into the country from Afghan soil and vowed to crack down.
Home Minister Rana Sanaullah Khan recently tried to reassure the nation that security forces were countering the TTP, while efforts were also underway to bring the militant group to the negotiating table. He said the Pakistani Taliban would first have to lay down their arms.
Maintain good ties with Kabul
The leadership in Kabul has described the statements from Islamabad blaming the Afghan Taliban as “provocative”.
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, considered a staunch supporter of the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, has warned Islamabad not to provoke Kabul.
“If we cannot maintain good relations with Afghanistan, the new war against terrorism will become a curse for us,” he told a seminar on Tuesday.
Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) political party says the government of Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif wants to use the TTP as an excuse to allow US drone strikes in Afghanistan.
“They could say that since the Afghan Taliban failed to prevent the TTP attacks in Pakistan, the US should carry out drone strikes against the TTP inside Afghanistan,” Jamshed Iqbal Cheema, Khan’s former adviser, told DW.
The TTP’s close ties to al-Qaeda
Meanwhile, the United States added TTP and its al-Qaeda branch to its “global terrorists” list, prompting sanctions against the groups.
The State Department said in a statement in December that Washington is “committed to using its full suite of counterterrorism tools” to counter the threat posed by these groups and prevent militants from using Afghanistan as “a platform for international terrorism.”
The United States also named the leaders of Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) as global terrorists: Osama Mehmood, head of the al-Qaeda branch, Atif Yahya Ghouri, deputy head of the al-Qaeda branch, and Muhammad Maruf. , who is responsible for recruitment.
He also appointed TTP leader Qari Amjad, who oversees militant attacks in northwest Pakistan.
Sami Yousufzai, an expert on Afghan and Pakistani Taliban affairs, believes that the United States is concerned about the increase in TTP attacks in Pakistan.
“The TTP has very close ties to al-Qaeda,” he said, adding that its rise “could encourage other terrorist groups, which could pose a serious challenge to the security of the United States.”
A difficult decision for Islamabad
Noor Fatima, an Islamabad-based analyst, believes this convergence of security interests could bring Pakistan and the United States together to fight the Taliban.
“Pakistan should ignore possible protests from religious parties because targeting TTP militants is in the interest of the countries. If Islamabad has to join forces with the US for this, it should not hesitate.”
Zia ur Rehman, a Pakistani militancy researcher, shares a similar view.
But any such collaboration between the US and Pakistan would be unpopular in a country where anti-US sentiment is rampant. The US has been high, particularly after Khan accused Washington of plotting to oust him from power.
Security cooperation with the United States under the current circumstances would be a difficult decision for Islamabad, Rehman said.
“Any such cooperation is also bound to further strain Pakistan’s ties with Afghanistan,” he stressed.
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Talat A Wizarat, former head of the international relations department at the University of Karachi, echoes this view.
“Every time Pakistan got close to the United States, it plunged the country into war,” he told DW. “If Pakistan allows US drone strikes to take place inside Afghanistan, it will anger the Afghan Taliban, who may then turn a blind eye to the TTP’s terrorist activities.”
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