When Russia convenes the Moscow Format on 5 October, the worsening confrontation between Pakistan and the Taliban will be among the issues on the table. Moscow says it hopes to encourage a “reasonable compromise”, bringing Afghanistan and Pakistan together with China, India, Iran, Russia and the Central Asian states.

The immediate dispute concerns Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). But its significance is becoming larger than another Afghanistan–Pakistan crisis. Islamabad is undergoing two strategic transformations simultaneously: Taliban-controlled Afghanistan has become a growing source of insecurity on Pakistan’s western frontier, while Pakistan itself is becoming more consequential farther west through its expanding defence relationship with Saudi Arabia and Türkiye.

The two developments were not caused by one another. Increasingly, however, they act upon the same state, military capacity and strategic choices.

Pakistan is becoming a hinge between South Asian and Middle Eastern security systems, while Afghanistan is becoming a pressure point on that hinge.

Pakistan is becoming a hinge between South Asian and Middle Eastern security systems, while Afghanistan is becoming a pressure point on that hinge.

The reversal in Pakistan’s Afghan position is striking. The Taliban’s return in 2021 removed a Kabul government with close relations with India and installed a movement over which Pakistan was widely assumed to possess considerable influence. Yet the TTP problem has transformed that presumed advantage into a serious vulnerability.

The Afghan Taliban and TTP are separate organisations, but years of overlapping insurgency and operational ties make separation more difficult than organisational labels imply. A UN monitoring report describes TTP as continuing to receive logistical and operational space and financial support in Afghanistan.

Islamabad may therefore be demanding more than a policy decision from Kabul. A complete rupture with TTP could force Taliban leaders to confront networks connected to the environment from which their own insurgency drew support.

Pakistan’s difficulty may concern not merely Taliban willingness to act but how far Kabul can go without incurring significant internal costs.

Pakistan’s........

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