From the tribal lashkars of 1947 to the Taliban of today, the Pakistan Army has converted other people’s wars into its business model. The result isn’t just a devastated Afghanistan; it’s a standing threat to regional and global security.

Pakistan’s military establishment has spent decades turning Afghanistan into a managed battlefield—an arena to be penetrated, pressured, and periodically punished so that no Afghan government can fully control its sovereignty or pursue an independent regional policy. That doctrine is usually packaged in the language of “strategic depth,” “counterterrorism,” or “Line of Control ‘LOC’/Durand Line security.” In practice, it has looked like a repeatable cycle: build proxies, weaponize instability, sell “solutions” to outside powers, and then reset the crisis whenever Afghanistan begins to slip outside Pakistan’s control.

The recent escalations—airstrikes, drone attacks, and cross-LOC violence—fit this pattern. What makes the latest phase distinct is the recurring sequence of Washington validation followed by Afghan bloodshed: moments when Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and self-declared Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir are publicly praised by President Donald Trump, followed soon after by Pakistani attacks inside Afghanistan that Afghans and UN-linked reporting describe as involving civilian casualties.

Timing alone does not prove causation. But when timing repeats in the same political rhythm—praise, photo-ops, diplomatic uplift; then bombs over Afghan territory—it becomes a pattern that deserves documentation, not dismissal.

1. The enduring machinery: a proxy doctrine that outlives governments

Pakistan’s proxy playbook is not a rumor; it is a documented historical method. In Kashmir in 1947, thousands of tribal irregulars were used as deniable shock troops. In 1965, Pakistan’s infiltration plan (Operation Gibraltar) attempted to trigger rebellion in Indian-administered Kashmir; it failed, but it reinforced the army’s preference for irregular war. In 1971, paramilitary auxiliaries in Bangladesh intensified atrocities and deepened the military’s institutional trauma after defeat and partition—helping harden the conviction that proxies are cheaper than conventional wars.

Then Afghanistan became the ultimate marketplace. The CIA’s program to arm and finance Afghan mujahidin during the Soviet occupation Operation Cyclone”—ran through Pakistan’s ISI, which became the gatekeeper of money, weapons, and factional power. The program didn’t merely fight the Soviets; it created an infrastructure that could be repurposed: training pipelines, financing channels, clerical networks, and sanctuary routes. It also empowered the ISI as a state within the state.

That is why Pakistan is often described as a country where the army does not defend the state so much as own the state’s strategic direction. The military’s incentives are not aligned with peace. A stable Afghanistan—a government strong enough to police borders (excluding the De Facto regimes), resist coercion, and build independent partnerships—would weaken the “strategic depth” doctrine and shrink the army’s leverage over regional diplomacy.

2. When the army’s business model meets the international system

The world has repeatedly paid Pakistan to be indispensable: first as the gateway for anti-Soviet jihad, later as the “frontline ally” in the War on Terror, and now as a broker of “stability” between a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and nervous regional capitals. Each phase has included funding, diplomatic indulgence, and strategic tolerance—often justified by the claim that Pakistan is necessary to contain an even worse........

© Eurasia Review