In just five years, the geopolitical landscape of our region has undergone significant changes. Once, Imran Khan was the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Ashraf Ghani ruled in Kabul, and Pakistan’s military establishment under General Qamar Javed Bajwa and ISI Chief Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed was at the centre of the Doha peace process the process that brought the United States and the Afghan Taliban to the negotiation table. That moment was celebrated in Pakistan as a diplomatic triumph, a long-awaited vindication of strategic patience. But history, as it often does, unfolded differently.

When the Taliban took Kabul on 15 August 2021, the world watched the rapid collapse of the Afghan Republic. For some, it was a moment of liberation; for others, a collapse of fragile hope. Prime Minister Imran Khan famously remarked that the Taliban had “broken the chains of slavery.” But that day marked not freedom; it marked the beginning of a new confusion, a new misreading of power and purpose across both sides of the Durand Line.

Pakistan, once the quiet facilitator of talks, suddenly found itself at the crossroads of their consequences. The Taliban’s swift takeover violated the very Doha Agreement that Pakistan had helped midwife. What followed was a breakdown of trust, and with it, a spiral of cross-border insecurity. Within months, terrorism began bleeding back into Pakistan’s soil, claiming soldiers, civilians, and the sense of relative calm that had been painfully earned. The idea that “strategic depth” could replace genuine peace had once again proved fatal.

Today, five years later, Pakistan and Afghanistan find themselves back in Doha. This time not as architects of peace but as its survivors, trying to reassemble the fragments of an agreement betrayed by ambition and mistrust. The Pakistani delegation’s message to the Taliban was clear: if cross-border terrorism continues, the war will not be fought inside Pakistan; it will be fought against the sanctuaries that breed it. And yet, there lies the deeper truth that this conflict cannot, and must not, be won through confrontation. The language of threat has exhausted itself. It is time for the language of statecraft.

Can Afghanistan Ever Find Peace Amid Taliban Rule And Regional Turmoil?

Let us confront the truth without anger and without illusion. Afghanistan and Pakistan are bound not only by borders but by blood, faith, and shared history. We have stood together and suffered together since the Soviet invasion of 1979, a war that claimed over half a million Afghan........

© The Friday Times