Pakistan and Afghanistan, through the good offices of Turkey and Qatar, are currently maintaining a temporary truce, but the former’s exasperation over how the Taliban has turned on them is evident, says T.C.A Raghavan, former Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan.
Raghavan, who also headed the Pakistan-Afghanistan-Iran Division in the Ministry of External Affairs, told StratNewsGlobal that “There is a definite increase in the kind of actions which the TTP (Tehreek-e-Taliban) is undertaking. The figures coming out of Pakistan show that in 2024 and 2025, the number of incidents or TTP-related terrorist attacks or militant attacks was possibly the highest in the last decade.”
“The Pakistanis obviously feel the pain of losing personnel or facing constant attacks. They may be tactical, but nevertheless a series of attacks saps morale of any country, and particularly of the Pakistan military and their security forces, which has been facing the brunt of these attacks.”
Raghavan, who represented India at the Moscow format peace talks on Afghanistan in 2018, also said that Pakistan is unable to come to terms with the reality that the Taliban has turned against them.
“They still haven’t got over the fact that the Taliban, which was their creation and which they nurtured and in fact, took a lot of policy risks, vis-à-vis the Americans, they find that something which they have created has now turned against them.”
He also said, “This exasperation also makes them undertake even more intense actions, including airstrikes. And, their pointing the finger at India or blaming India emerges out of that same sense of exasperation and anger that they are, in fact, caught in a situation to which they have no real policy solution themselves.”
‘Zero Ties With Pakistan’
The India-Pakistan relationship, he said, stands at “zero” with only “bare bones” left of formal diplomatic ties. He said especially after the Pahalgam attacks both sides have stopped talking completely and currently both Afghanistan as well as India see Pakistan in adversarial terms.
“While to some extent there was a stabilization (post 2019 Pulwama attacks) it is now clear that it was a very fragile kind of stability… And so we are now in the low point of a fresh crisis situation and there is really no saying how long this will last,” Raghavan warned.
“But one thing is very clear that this situation will not go on indefinitely because, like all other India-Pakistan issues there, there’s always a cyclical pattern. So this situation will change, but I don’t think anyone can reasonably predict when and how it will change.”
Pakistan downgraded diplomatic ties after India changed the status of J&K. and the high commissioner was withdrawn.
“What is important is the kind of longer term policy position you are taking. At present, it looks to me that we are not in a frame of mind of looking at longer term policy positions. But we are really in a short-term tactical mode. This is because of the constant threat of further terrorist attacks,” Raghavan said.
But “there is no military solution to India-Pakistan problems. At some stage, both countries will have to think about medium and longer term approaches. Because, the short-term, highly securitized approaches are effective but only effective in the short-term. They leave you without a longer term trajectory and direction.”
