If there is one foreign policy in Pakistan’s history that has come to symbolise chronic failure, contradiction and bloodshed, it is the country’s policy towards Afghanistan. This tragedy has not remained confined to the streets of Kabul or Kandahar alone; its repercussions have shaken Peshawar, Quetta, Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad alike. The central question is not merely what happened in Afghanistan, but who made the decisions in Pakistan, on what logic those decisions were based, and why the consequences were borne by the entire nation.

The military foundations of this policy were laid during the era of Field Marshal Ayub Khan. After 1958, Pakistan’s Afghan policy was, for the first time, removed from parliamentary oversight and placed firmly under the control of the security establishment. Afghanistan came to be viewed not as a neighbouring country but as a permanent security threat. The Pashtunistan dispute, Kabul’s proximity to the Soviet Union, and Pakistan’s strategic alliance with the United States reinforced this perception. Secret arrangements such as the Badaber base turned Pakistan into a frontline state of the Cold War, but at the same time fixed Afghanistan in Pakistan’s strategic imagination as a potential adversary. This mental framework would be repeatedly reproduced in the decades that followed.

The period following Ayub Khan, particularly the government of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, represents a critical yet often overlooked phase in Pakistan’s Afghan policy. Under Bhutto, Afghan policy was, for the first time, consciously reassessed at the political level. The rise of Mohammad Daoud Khan in Afghanistan in 1973, the revival of the Pashtunistan claim, and Kabul’s growing closeness to Moscow deeply unsettled Islamabad. The Bhutto government concluded that diplomatic protest alone would not suffice as an effective response. As a result, a covert, limited and unofficial course was adopted to exert pressure on the Afghan government.

During this period, contacts with Afghan Islamist circles went beyond political engagement and assumed an operational dimension. Through Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), certain Afghan Islamist groups were provided covert facilitation, training and logistical support. The objective was to keep the Daoud Khan regime internally preoccupied and counter pressure arising from the Pashtunistan issue. These activities were limited in scope and neither publicly acknowledged nor framed at the time as “jihad”. Yet this marked the first instance in which Pakistan systematically employed religious actors as instruments of state policy to influence Afghanistan’s internal political balance.

While the decision itself was political, its implementation rested entirely in the hands of the military and intelligence apparatus. This is why Bhutto’s Afghan policy cannot be described as fully civilian, nor can it be entirely separated from the jihad model that would later emerge under Ziaul Haq. In retrospect, this was the stage that prepared the ground for the Afghan jihad, even if the full consequences of such a course were not fully appreciated by the Bhutto government at the time.

After 1977, Pakistan’s Afghan policy reached a point of no return under General Ziaul Haq. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 placed Pakistan at the centre of global geopolitics. The conflict was framed not as Afghan national resistance but as an “Islamic jihad”. Religion entered the core narrative of state policy for the first time, and the ISI was granted sweeping authority over the training, financing and organisation of the mujahideen. In essence, this jihad was a Cold War proxy project. Its domestic consequences, however, included the proliferation of the Kalashnikov culture, sectarian violence and the normalisation of non-state armed groups. This was the ideological and operational nursery from which the Taliban, and later the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), would emerge.

Following Zia’s death, democracy formally returned, but control over Afghan policy remained firmly with the military establishment and the ISI. Throughout the 1990s, governments led by Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif came and went, yet decisions concerning Afghanistan continued to be made in General Headquarters rather than in parliament. The civil war among the mujahideen, the destruction of Kabul and the corruption of Afghan leadership created a vacuum that the Taliban ultimately filled. Pakistan viewed the Taliban as a means to restore order and secure “strategic depth” in Afghanistan, extending diplomatic and logistical support to them. This, too, was a decision rooted not in public debate or parliamentary approval but in security-centric thinking.

Under General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s Afghan policy appeared to take a dramatic U-turn after 9/11. Islamabad aligned itself with the United States and formally distanced itself from the Taliban regime. Yet this shift proved incomplete. Afghan Taliban were not fully designated as enemies, giving rise to the distinction between “good Taliban” and “bad Taliban”. It was this contradiction that facilitated the emergence of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, as the instruments of jihad turned, for the first time with full force, against the Pakistani state itself. The entire country soon found itself transformed into a battlefield.

The decade from 2008 to 2018 became one of confusion in Pakistan’s Afghan policy. Under successive governments of the Pakistan Peoples Party and Pakistan Muslim League-N, the tenures of Generals Kayani and later Raheel Sharif unfolded. Strategic hedging with Afghan Taliban continued, while an internal war was waged against the TTP. This duality ultimately collapsed after the December 2014 attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar. The blood of children ended the state’s ambiguity, leading to decisive operations such as Zarb-e-Azb and Radd-ul-Fasaad — though these decisions came far too late.

During the period of former prime minister Imran Khan and General Qamar Javed Bajwa, Afghan policy assumed a renewed form of “strategic hedging”. Facilitation of the Doha talks, sustained engagement with the Taliban, and a softened narrative following their return to power in 2021 reflected this approach. The visit of General Faiz Hameed to Kabul and the romanticised portrayal of the Taliban in sections of the media became emblematic of this policy. Simultaneously, experiments such as negotiations with the TTP and reintegration frameworks were undertaken, whose repercussions would later become far more severe.

It is therefore essential to state clearly that when military spokesmen and the official state narrative today attempt to place sole responsibility for rising terrorism, internal instability and Pak-Afghan border tensions on former prime minister Imran Khan, such claims fail to withstand historical scrutiny.

Terrorism, the resurgence of the TTP, the hardening posture of the Afghan Taliban and border skirmishes are not the outcome of any single government’s three- or four-year tenure. Rather, they represent the logical culmination of a seven-decade-long Afghan policy whose formulation, execution and direction have consistently remained under the control of the military establishment. While certain narrative and diplomatic elements of Afghan policy did become more visible during Imran Khan’s government, the real driving seat of policy was neither in his hands nor in those of any civilian prime minister before him.

The bitter truth is that Pakistan’s Afghan policy was defined through a military lens under Ayub Khan, transformed into a religio-military project under Ziaul Haq, entangled in dreams of strategic depth during the 1990s, subjected to a half-hearted “enlightened moderation” U-turn under Musharraf, and delayed under the banner of strategic hedging from 2008 to 2022.

Since November 2022, under Field Marshal General Asim Munir, Afghan policy has exhibited clarity rather than confusion. However, it is equally undeniable that this clarity is confrontational rather than conciliatory. A hard line against the TTP, strained relations with the Afghan Taliban, and recurring border clashes have all become defining features of this new phase.

The current situation — marked by resurging terrorism and near-war conditions in Pak-Afghan relations — is therefore a delayed reaction to decades of military-driven decisions, not a crisis manufactured by any single civilian government. It is a reality that may no longer be manageable through security measures alone.

Equally undeniable is the fact that issues of Afghanistan, terrorism and border security have consistently been kept beyond parliamentary oversight and public accountability in the name of “national security” — a practice that continues to this day. Civilian governments, whether under Imran Khan or those before and after him, have remained participants in the narrative rather than holders of real authority. Consequently, attempts by state spokesmen to shift the burden of today’s instability onto a single political leader amount to an evasion of collective institutional responsibility.

Viewed across the full arc from 1958 to 2026, the outcome is stark. Afghanistan, once imagined as Pakistan’s strategic depth, has become — after India — its second major security challenge. This failure belongs neither to one prime minister nor to one general, but to a persistently militarised worldview in which politicians were reduced to narrative partners while diplomacy, economics, reconciliation and public trust were sacrificed in favour of the gun.

Pakistan’s terrorism problem, its strained relations with Afghanistan and its deteriorating border situation are not the failures of an individual or a political party. They are the product of an Afghan policy shaped and reshaped by the military establishment — from Ayub Khan to Asim Munir. Without acknowledging this reality, neither meaningful accountability for the past nor a credible hope for peace in the future is possible.

This, ultimately, is the tragedy of Pakistan’s Afghan policy: a policy that travelled from Field Marshal to Field Marshal, yet succeeded in turning neither Afghanistan into a friend nor Pakistan into a secure state.

Note:

Fayyaz Raja has been associated with journalism for over 25 years. He has worked with the Nawa-i-Waqt Group, Jang Group, Dawn Group and Hum Network as a reporter on foreign and defence affairs, feature producer, columnist and analyst. He currently works as a freelance journalist.