The geography we cannot change

Long after today's governments have gone, Pakistan and Afghanistan will still share the same mountains, passes, tribes, markets and frontier. That simple geographical truth should matter more than the anger of the present moment.

Relations between Islamabad and Kabul have rarely appeared as dangerous as they do today. Pakistan accuses the Afghan Taliban authorities of allowing the TTP and other militants to use Afghan territory for attacks inside Pakistan. Kabul rejects the allegation and accuses Pakistan of violating Afghan sovereignty. Air strikes, border clashes and competing accusations have gradually turned a security dispute into something close to direct confrontation between two states that have neither the geographical space nor the economic luxury for permanent hostility.

The difficulties are old. Afghanistan opposed Pakistan's entry into the United Nations in 1947 and has contested the Durand Line ever since. The Soviet invasion, the arrival of millions of refugees in Pakistan and the years of the Afghan jihad tied the two societies together. After 2001, each side blamed the other for the instability that followed. When the Taliban returned to power in 2021, many in Pakistan expected a more manageable western border. Instead, the TTP became the central dispute.

The record since then shows a gradual shift. Pakistan's early strikes in Afghanistan in 2022 and 2024 were limited and followed by quick de-escalation. In 2025 Islamabad also pursued diplomacy: visits to Kabul, a trilateral meeting with China in Beijing, an agreement to raise diplomatic ties to ambassador level, and a framework for a joint feasibility study of the Uzbekistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan railway. When attacks continued regardless, the approach hardened.

The Taliban's failure to rein in the TTP cannot be justified on any ground. It repeats an earlier mistake. Sheltering armed groups that other country regards as a mortal threat has once again put Afghanistan on a collision course. Pakistan's response was a strike in Kabul in October 2025 and a sustained air campaign from February 2026, making force a main tool of interaction.

Yet force has not brought security, and confrontation is a course neither country can sustain for long. The strongest argument for peace is not sentimental. It is arithmetic.

Afghanistan is landlocked, and Pakistan offers it some of the shortest routes to the Arabian Sea. Bilateral trade reached nearly $2 billion in FY2024-25 despite political friction. Pakistan, for its part, needs a land route to Central Asia, and Afghanistan is the natural one. Projects such as the Trans-Afghan Railway, CASA-1000 and TAPI are meant to link Central Asia's energy and markets with South Asia. All of them pass through this one border.

Conflict already carries a cost that does not show up on the battlefield. Afghan traders have moved towards Iran and Central Asia after repeated closures of routes through Pakistan, and Afghanistan's total trade actually grew in 2025 as they did so. Pakistan is exploring alternative access to Central Asia through China and Iran. This should worry both governments. Once traders build new supply chains, they rarely return simply because the politics improve. Every prolonged closure moves a share of commerce away, possibly for good.

There is a deeper change required in Kabul. Afghanistan's celebrated resistance to foreign domination has been central to its national memory. But resistance is an instrument of survival, not a model of governance. A society cannot permanently organise itself around the virtues needed to defeat invaders. The qualities that win a war, such as secrecy, hierarchy, ideological rigidity and suspicion, are not necessarily those needed to build universities, run cities, attract investment, educate women and men, negotiate trade agreements and take part confidently in the modern economy. The move from insurgency to government demands an intellectual transition as profound as the military victory that preceded it.

Restraining the TTP is therefore a matter of sovereignty and self-interest, not a favour to Pakistan. A government that hosts groups attacking its largest neighbour will find it hard to attract the capital its economy needs.

Pakistan has its own homework. Geography does not translate into permanent influence and on the expectation that past support buys present.

That is where a new relationship could begin. The two states do not need to agree about everything. France and Germany did not erase their wars before building Europe. Southeast Asian states did not settle every territorial disagreement before building economic cooperation. Successful regions are not composed of countries without historical grievances. They are often composed of countries that eventually decide that prosperity is a more productive use of geography than revenge.

Pakistan and Afghanistan face precisely that choice. One road leads towards an increasingly militarised frontier, alternative trade routes, proxy accusations, radicalisation and generations taught to regard the people across the border as adversaries. The other turns the same geography into corridors: Karachi and Gwadar connected northward, Kabul connected southward, Central Asian energy flowing towards South Asia, and families, traders and students crossing a border regulated by states rather than militants.

The mountain passes will remain whichever road is chosen. So will the Durand Line, Pakistan and Afghanistan. That is the lesson both countries have taken too long to learn: you can choose your policies, allies and governments, but not your neighbour.

Sometimes the most useful act available to societies accustomed to conflict is not to win another battle. It is to turn the page.