Pakistan’s intensified attacks on Afghanistan, coming only days after senior Turkish and Qatari security officials visited Kabul and Kandahar, raise an important question: was the trip a diplomatic “final warning” before the shift from dialogue to military pressure? On the surface, the visit by Ibrahim Kalin, head of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization, and Hamad bin Khamis al-Kubaisi, deputy head of Qatar’s National Security Council, was a mediation mission. But what followed has made it more significant: Pakistan resumed airstrikes on several Afghan provinces, including Kandahar, the Taliban’s main center of decision-making.
That the strikes began after the mediators visited Kabul and Kandahar and relayed the Taliban’s message to Pakistan is telling and worth noting. It is as though the mediators carried a stern warning to the Taliban, which the group did not heed: that the status quo, in which Afghan territory is used against Pakistan, is intolerable for Islamabad, and that if the Taliban cannot or will not take serious, practical steps, the consequences will soon fall on Kabul. It cannot be said with certainty that Turkey and Qatar issued the Taliban an “ultimatum.” But the sequence of meetings and events suggests that this time the mediation came with a degree of warning. If so, Pakistan’s subsequent strikes will be of a different character. Islamabad will argue that the Taliban were given a diplomatic opportunity, that the messages were delivered through mediators, and that the expected response never came. Raising the cost for the Taliban, it will say, is therefore now on the agenda.
Another notable point is the Turkish delegation’s trip to Kandahar. In Kandahar, Kalin met Mullah Shirin Akhund, the Taliban’s governor, but was unable to meet Hibatullah Akhundzada, the group’s leader. This failure may seem diplomatically minor, but it could matter for understanding what came next. If the aim of the trip was to deliver a message to the Taliban’s real center of decision-making, then not meeting Hibatullah means the Turkish delegation could not speak directly with the group’s most important decision-maker. Just days later, Kandahar was among the targets of Pakistan’s new strikes. This coincidence does not necessarily imply cause and effect, but politically it raises questions. Did Islamabad conclude, after the Turkish and Qatari consultations, that the diplomatic message had not had the necessary effect? Or were the recent strikes already on Pakistan’s agenda, and the mediators’ trip simply failed to stop them?
The mediators’ conduct after Pakistan’s latest strikes is also significant. Turkey and Qatar had earlier explicitly condemned the deadly attack in Kohat, in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. But after Pakistan’s strikes on Afghanistan, a review of the two countries’ published official positions shows, at least so far, no reaction of comparable clarity condemning the strikes. This silence should not automatically be read as support for Pakistan. The mediators may be refraining from public condemnation to preserve a channel of communication with the attacking side, or to keep the talks from collapsing.
In foreign policy, however, silence too can carry a message. This is especially true when a mediator has explicitly condemned a terrorist attack in Pakistan but takes no similar stance on Pakistan’s attacks on Afghanistan. It invites the question of whether, in Turkey’s and Qatar’s security assessment, Islamabad’s claims that the Taliban support the TTP (Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan) are credible and serious enough that they are unwilling to take a clear position against Pakistan’s military action. Seen this way, Turkey and Qatar may be less than fully neutral mediators in this crisis, and closer to Pakistan’s security concerns in their understanding. That does not mean the mediators endorse Pakistan’s strikes. There is an important difference between “endorsing an attack” and understanding or accepting “the security logic of the attacking party.” Yet this difference may explain why the main pressure in the mediation process has fallen on the Taliban.
For this reason, the silence of the Turkish and Qatari mediators deserves close attention. If it continues, the perception may harden in Kabul that Turkey and Qatar, far from opposing Pakistan’s attacks, are part of the mechanism of pressure on the Taliban. Once the Taliban reach that conclusion, they will most likely keep saying no to Qatar’s and Turkey’s requests, continue backing the TTP, and escalate tensions. Conversely, if both mediators now adopt a clear official position, calling for an end to Pakistan’s strikes and for the parties to return immediately to the negotiating table, it would show that their earlier silence was mostly about keeping diplomatic channels open, not about siding with Pakistan at the Taliban’s expense, or the reverse. In that case, we would be looking at a different situation.
You can read the Persian version of this analysis article here:
