Muttaqi: We Can't Understand Pakistan's Afghan Tension Goal

We Can't Understand What Pakistan Wants From This Tension: Muttaqi's Accusation, and How Kabul-Islamabad Ties Got Here

The Pakistan Times — Islamabad, August 15, 2026

Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi sat down with BBC Pashto and said something that's become almost a recurring line from Kabul at this point, that despite repeated efforts, the Taliban administration simply cannot figure out what Pakistan actually hopes to gain by keeping tensions with Afghanistan alive. It's a familiar complaint by now, but understanding why he keeps making it means looking back at how these two neighbours got to this point in the first place.

Where This Round of Tension Actually Started

The relationship between Islamabad and Kabul has been sliding for years, but things took a sharper turn in late 2025. Pakistan has consistently accused the Taliban government of sheltering the Pakistani Taliban, known as the TTP, blaming the group for a sharp rise in attacks on Pakistani security forces along the border. Muttaqi, for his part, has pushed back hard on that framing every time it comes up, describing the TTP issue as a two-decade-old problem rooted in Pakistan's own internal policy failures rather than something Kabul is responsible for.

Things escalated into actual military action last October, when Pakistan carried out airstrikes in Kabul and Paktika province, and explosions were heard in the Afghan capital. Afghanistan's Ministry of Defence blamed Pakistan for those blasts without offering detailed evidence, and the incident happened to coincide almost exactly with Muttaqi's first-ever visit to India since the Taliban returned to power, a six-day trip that itself signaled Kabul was actively working to build relationships beyond its traditional reliance on Pakistan.

A Pattern of Mixed Signals

What makes this relationship so hard to read is how often warm gestures and hard accusations have come from Kabul almost simultaneously. Around the same period as the Kabul strikes, Muttaqi was telling reporters that Afghanistan wanted a peaceful resolution but had other options if peace efforts failed, while also saying the Taliban had no real problem with ordinary Pakistanis, just with certain elements inside the Pakistani state trying to stir up trouble. He's repeated versions of that same message multiple times since, at one point telling a gathering of pro-Taliban media in Kabul that Pakistan was pursuing what he called mysterious projects inside Afghanistan, accusing Islamabad of trying to use economic pressure to topple the Taliban government entirely.

Border closures have been a particularly sore point in these exchanges. Muttaqi has argued that Pakistan shut border crossings believing it would trigger economic collapse and public unrest inside Afghanistan, a strategy he insists failed completely since Afghanistan simply routed food and essential goods through other countries instead. He's also pointed to what he describes as Pakistan's fragmented decision-making as a real obstacle to resolving any of this, claiming that Pakistan's own foreign minister needs sign-off from both the prime minister and the army chief before anything meaningful can move forward on the Afghan file.

The Diplomatic Standoff Continues

By this point, Muttaqi has settled into a fairly consistent talking point: that every other country neighbouring Afghanistan has workable relations with the Taliban government except Pakistan. Whether that's entirely accurate or somewhat exaggerated for effect, it reflects how Kabul wants this dispute perceived internationally, as Pakistan being the outlier rather than Afghanistan being the source of instability along the border.

For Islamabad's part, the position has stayed fairly steady too. Pakistani officials, including Defence Minister Khawaja Asif, have criticized what they call the Taliban's contradictory approach, issuing threats with one hand while calling for dialogue with the other, a description that captures just how difficult these two governments have found it to move from mutual accusation toward any kind of durable understanding.

Why It Keeps Going in Circles

At the heart of it, both sides are stuck defending narratives that put the blame squarely on the other. Pakistan sees a Taliban government unwilling or unable to control militant groups operating from Afghan soil. The Taliban sees a Pakistani state using border closures, airstrikes, and economic pressure to force political outcomes inside Afghanistan it has no right to dictate. Neither government has shown much appetite for the kind of concession that would actually break this cycle, which is probably why Muttaqi's comment to BBC Pashto lands less like a genuine question and more like a well-worn grievance, repeated once again for anyone still listening.

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Sources: BBC Pashto, Al Jazeera, 

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