PAKISTAN- AFGHANISTAN RELATIONS: THE NEW REGIONAL POWER PLAY AND SECURITY CONCERNS

Abstract

This study argues that the 2025 escalation in Pakistan– Afghanistan relations marks a structural turning point in the bilateral security paradigm rather than a continuation of cyclical border tensions. While the US withdrawal in 2021 provided a permissive strategic environment, it was the confluence of three factors, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) reorganisation from Afghan territory, increased militarisation of the border along the Durand Line, and competitive regional repositioning by China, Russia, India, and Iran, that made the relationship a regionalised security contest. The article has two primary assertions. To start with, the exacerbation of the relations in 2021-25 is a shift out of the proxy-buffer expectation to the open militarised deterrence that fundamentally alters the strategic choice of Pakistan towards Afghanistan. Secondly, the Saudi Arabia-Turkiye-Qatar trilateral mediation framework in October 2025 is a new pattern of managing conflicts in the region with Muslim majority states on the lead which heralds the redistribution of diplomatic powers by the western powers to South-Central Asian crises. With a collection of official statements, policy reports, datasets of conflicts, as well as regional diplomatic documents of 2021-2025 in view, this article argues that Afghanistan has shifted into a stage of both great power military interventions to a research laboratory of regionally controlled politics of security. The 2025 crisis is therefore a turning point that is redefining the relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan in the framework of a multipolar regional order.