Déjà Vu: Fears Grow That Afghanistan Is Once Again Becoming a Safe Haven for Extremists

A 2012 file photo of Tehrik-i-Taliban fighters operating in the Pakistani province of South Waziristan (Courtesy of VOA News)

By Robert W. Moore III

Suicide bombers struck two mosques in the Pakistani provinces of Baluchistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on September 29, killing at least 57 worshippers and injuring numerous others who had gathered to commemorate the birth of the Prophet Muhammed. No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks yet, stoking fears of further unrest as Pakistan gears up for its general elections in January. 

The resurgence of insurgent activity in Afghanistan has led to heightened tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan accuses the Taliban of enabling the flow of foreign fighters through its borders and failing to take robust steps to counter the activities of terrorist organizations operating in the region, such as Tehrik-i-Taliban (TTP)—a Pakistani offshoot of the Afghan Taliban—and the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISIS-K). ISIS-K has previously targeted civilians in Pakistan’s border provinces. 

TTP denied responsibility for the September 29 bombings in a communique issued shortly after the explosions. On July 30, the group conducted a suicide bombing in Pakistan’s Bajaur District, killing more than 54 people and prompting Pakistani officials to threaten the use of military force against Afghanistan along with charging the Taliban for failing to meet their obligations under the 2020 Doha Agreement. The Taliban have consistently refuted these claims and publicly condemned the actions of groups like TTP and ISIS-K (who strongly oppose each other), with Taliban Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada reportedly referring to Afghan fighters’ cross-border attacks as “un-Islamic” and directing Afghans not to collaborate with or give donations to the TTP. 

Nevertheless, the violence along the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier has caused alarm amongst policymakers and security analysts in the United States, Russia, China, and Iran, who fear that Afghanistan will once again become a safe haven for terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS that possess more global ambitions. The bombings came just two days after Afghanistan’s Taliban government announced it had apprehended 200 militants suspected of mounting cross-border attacks on neighboring Pakistan. Taliban officials went on to state that their government was taking other “concrete steps” to “neutralize” terrorist activity along Afghanistan’s southern border. The statements were made as part of a high-level summit in Kabul between Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi and Pakistan’s Special Envoy on Afghanistan, Asif Durrani. Both parties sought to address the increasingly prominent regional security threat posed by reinvigorated terrorist networks. The meetings occurred two weeks after a September 6, 2023 raid in which TTP forces attacked two Pakistani security posts in the district of Chitral, killing four Pakistani soldiers in the process.

Since its emergence in 2007, TTP has evolved into a robust insurgency operating within the vicinity of the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier and has been designated a global terrorist organization by Pakistan, the United States, and the United Nations. The group seeks to impose a form of Islamist rule in Pakistan like that of Afghanistan since the withdrawal of foreign military forces in August of 2021. It also aims to secure the release of its fighters from Pakistani prisons and to reduce the Pakistani military presence in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. 

According to the Islamabad-based Pak-Institute for Peace Studies, a Pakistani think tank, TTP fighters, many of whom were freed from Afghan prisons and armed with seized American weaponry, conducted 123 attacks inside Pakistan over the course of the past year. In recent months, hundreds of former Afghan Taliban fighters have crossed the border into Pakistan to join the TTP. Most of these fighters reportedly grew up in areas such as Wardak Province during the American War in Afghanistan, where they were educated in Taliban-run schools that extolled the virtues of jihad and martyrdom. Consequently, some observers have characterized the foreign fighter phenomenon currently engulfing Afghanistan and Pakistan as a continuation of the same historical cycles that have fueled violence within the region for the past 40 years.