For decades, Pakistan has insisted that stability in Afghanistan is essential for its own security. Yet today, Islamabad is pursuing a policy that does exactly the opposite by strangling Afghanistan’s fragile economy. The objective is to ‘coerce’ the Afghan Taliban government into submission. The prolonged closure of key border crossings along the Durand Line, including Torkham between Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Nangarhar and Chaman-Spin Boldak between Balochistan and Kandahar, has turned geography into a weapon. It is a classic case of Pakistan weaponising Afghanistan’s landlocked reality in order to force political compliance through economic suffocation.

For more than four months since October 2025 heavy military clashes, these border crossings have remained shut. The informal cross-border trade that has been a feature of Afghanistan-Pakistan relations since decades. Millions of Afghans depend on this for daily survival. With the daily movement of essentials like food, medicine, fuel, and construction materials effectively stopped, Afghans face a severe crisis as Afghanistan used to export much of its agriculture and horticulture produce besides coal to the Pakistani market.

The cross-border trade between the two countries saw a 40 per cent decline in 2025 from 2024, down from over $2.64 billion to $1.77 billion. For a landlocked country already reeling from international sanctions, frozen assets, and humanitarian crisis, the impact has been more than severe. And Pakistan knows this, which is precisely what gives its policy a coercive power.

Islamabad has justified the border closure by accusing the Afghan Taliban of sheltering terrorist groups such as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), besides enabling attacks by Baloch insurgents like the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA). On January 20, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif repeated this familiar refrain, insisting that while the blockade “should not have been there",........

© News18