The efforts by China to sort out the issue of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan’s support for the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) between Islamabad and Kabul have so far not borne any fruit, and relations between the two neighbours have remained extremely strained. It appears that China has not been able to prevail upon the Afghan Taliban to stop supporting the TTP, as ostensibly, for Kabul, the interests of the militant regime take precedence over the country’s larger national interest.
This is the reality that China and Pakistan must realise and, therefore, should not expect much from the Afghan Taliban in terms of giving up their support for the Pakistani Taliban, referred to by Islamabad as ‘Fitna Tul Khawarij’. Even if the Taliban regime momentarily stops harbouring the TTP, this would most likely be a makeshift arrangement aimed at obtaining concessions from Pakistan, including the opening of the border between the two countries. The Pakistan-Afghanistan international border, known as the Durand Line, has remained closed since October 2025, when Islamabad shut it in desperation after Kabul continued supporting the TTP, enabling the latter to carry out large-scale terrorist attacks inside Pakistan. So, reportedly, despite recent diplomatic developments suggesting a renewed push to ease tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Foreign Office of Pakistan recently said that meaningful progress in relations would depend on the Taliban taking concrete and verifiable action against the TTP and other terrorist groups operating from Afghan territory.
At his final weekly media briefing as Foreign Office spokesperson, Tahir Andrabi said Islamabad welcomed China’s continuing engagement, but that external facilitation could not substitute for action by Kabul against militant infrastructure. While any Chinese mediation between Pakistan and Afghanistan is not seeing the light of day, the problem for Pakistan is the continued large-scale terrorist attacks by the TTP, now reportedly in collusion with the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) in the Pashtun parts of Balochistan. This means that the closure of the border by Pakistan is not proving sufficient to prevent the infiltration of terrorists from Afghanistan into Pakistan.
It may be mentioned that one of the key reasons for the continued large-scale infiltration of TTP terrorists from Afghanistan into Pakistan is the removal of sections of the border fencing by Taliban fighters. The fencing was constructed by Pakistan along its 2,640-kilometre-long border with Afghanistan. Although around 90 percent of the fencing is still very much intact, infiltration is obviously taking place through the 10 percent where breaches have occurred.
Therefore, apart from physical and political efforts to search for a solution to the Afghan Taliban’s recalcitrance to stop harbouring the Pakistani Taliban on Afghan soil, Pakistan needs to take physical steps, short of military action against terrorist hideouts in Afghanistan. This key physical action is to erect another layer of fencing within its territory, parallel to the already fenced border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Although it may sound like a strange and even absurd idea to some, erecting another layer of fencing is far less difficult than constructing the original fencing along the border, which started in 2016 and was successfully completed by the end of 2021. By that time, Pakistan had completed fencing around 2,600 kilometres, while the remaining 21 kilometres were to be fenced with the consent of the Taliban regime. Islamabad had expected that, after their second coming to power, the Taliban would behave maturely, particularly towards their main benefactor, Pakistan, but this never happened. Instead, the regime has repeatedly vowed to pull down the fence.
In this situation, the best strategy for Pakistan to safeguard its territory and its people from terrorists and other negative influences is, as suggested above, to erect a second layer of fencing along the border. This is a very important policy recommendation for Pakistan’s decision-makers because it is a matter of national security, and there should be no flexibility or delay in taking this step. Ideally, the decision to establish another layer of fencing along the border should come from the political government, or even Parliament, because it is fundamentally an issue of Pakistan’s territorial integrity and national security.
Over the years, however, the political leadership has failed to come up with a comprehensive policy, despite repeated spikes in terrorist attacks in the country, mostly linked to Afghanistan. The only clear policy was the National Action Plan (NAP), formulated by the leadership of the country after the horrific December 16, 2014 school attack in Peshawar, which claimed the lives of around 150 people, mostly schoolchildren. However, implementation of the 20-point NAP has left a lot to be desired.
This tells us a very hard reality of our national life: when decision-makers, who ought to formulate major policies, fail to do so, a policy vacuum is created, resulting in extremely negative consequences. Ultimately, this policy vacuum, which somehow has to be filled, is plugged by institutions that are not primarily mandated or expected to formulate such policies.
Effective management of border control is directly linked to national security and, therefore, it is the foremost responsibility of the political government to focus completely on this aspect of governance. The entire process of development and peace-building is dependent on national security. But the problem with the present political dispensation is that it has different, rather divergent, priorities from what national security requires of Pakistan.
The decision to erect another layer of fencing along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan is the irreducible minimum required to protect Pakistan and its citizens from terrorist attacks. It is not only a long-term solution to prevent Pakistan from being negatively influenced by war, conflict and associated problems in Afghanistan, but, more importantly, it would help regulate the cross-border movement of goods and people between the two countries.
Irregular and informal cross-border movement has been a cause of multiple problems for both Pakistan and Afghanistan. One example is the large-scale smuggling of goods that are transported back into Pakistan without being consumed in Afghanistan. Better border management and controlled movement could significantly reduce such practices while making legitimate trade and travel more transparent and manageable.
On its part, the Afghan regime has consistently rejected the fencing of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. There is also strong opposition from important political groups and stakeholders on the Pakistani side of the Durand Line, including Pashtun ethno-linguistic nationalist parties such as the Awami National Party (ANP) and PkMAP, as well as Jamaat-e-Islami and tribal organisations such as Tanzeem-e-Ittehad-e-Qabail. By and large, however, a dominant majority of Pakistanis have remained supportive of border fencing.
Today, most Pakistanis would like their government to take concrete measures to put an end to terrorism in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. But this can only be achieved if certain key policy measures enshrined in the NAP are implemented and, above all, if Islamabad initiates the construction of a second layer of fencing along the border.
Nations take massive measures to protect their territory and people from negative influences emanating from other countries. Erecting another layer of fencing would undoubtedly be a huge task, both financially and logistically. But against the backdrop of Pakistan’s critical national security needs, it is a necessary and relatively small step forward. The objective should not be to permanently isolate Afghanistan but to establish effective border control, prevent militant infiltration, regulate the movement of people and goods, and protect Pakistan’s territory and citizens from the spillover of conflict across the border.