LAHORE: One of Pakistan’s requests to the US is that it works to recover the vast quantities of weapons it left behind after withdrawing from Afghanistan in 2021, reports The Economist.
The magazine reports Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, Pakistan’s military spokesman, as saying that America should buy the weapons back on Afghanistan’s black market to prevent more falling into the hands of insurgents there and in Pakistan. “Everything is available to the highest bidder” in Afghanistan, he says.
The magazine reports that Pakistan also wants America to provide it with more intelligence and to resume supplying Pakistani forces with weaponry to help fight insurgents. American officials may be open to supplying equipment such as mine-resistant armoured personnel carriers and night-vision goggles, which they believe would not alter the military balance with India. But provision of any such kit would be fiercely opposed by India’s government, a far bigger buyer of American military hardware. Pakistan’s other main demand is more challenging. It wants America and other Western governments to accept its claims that India is backing the TTP and Baloch separatists. Pakistan recently presented foreign governments with what it says is fresh evidence. And it wants them to put pressure on India to stop such activity.
Despite this, there is no sign of Pakistan withholding co-operation against ISKP. Field Marshal Munir sees it as an important part of his calculus in relations with the Trump administration. Nor is ISKP only a concern for the West. Russia considers it a serious threat. So does China: one of its citizens was killed by ISKP in Afghanistan in January. Iran, too, deems ISKP dangerous, after it killed more than 100 people in a bomb attack in the city of Kerman in 2024.
Still, as Pakistan steps up its counter-terrorism partnership with the West, familiar tensions are emerging. On the Western side, some suggest that Pakistan has hyped up the importance of some ISKP figures it has killed or captured (something it often did with alleged al-Qaeda leaders in earlier years). On Pakistan’s side, some officials suggest that ISKP is covertly backed by America to strike against Russia and Iran and to undermine Chinese interests in Pakistan and Afghanistan. America’s security co-operation with Pakistan may be on the up. But in the words of one veteran in that field, there is only one constant in the relationship: mutual distrust.
For most of the past 25 years, “phenomenal” was not a word many Americans used to describe Pakistan’s co-operation on counter-terrorism. Yet that is how General Michael Kurilla, then head of America’s Central Command, characterised it in June. His praise was striking not just because American officials have long accused Pakistan of covertly backing the Afghan Taliban and sheltering Osama bin Laden. The remark also came seven weeks after Pakistan-India clash in May this year after India blamed a terrorist attack on Pakistan.
What explains the change of tune? The answer lies in the lawless borderlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan. That is now the stamping ground of the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), an offshoot of the group that established a “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria in 2014. America and other Western governments see ISKP as their biggest international terrorist threat. Partly because of this, many governments are quietly engaging with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
At Western governments’ request, Pakistan has stepped up joint efforts to kill and capture ISKP leaders in the last year or so. Among them was the alleged planner of an ISKP suicide attack in Kabul that killed 13 American service members and about 170 civilians in August 2021. Pakistan arrested him in February and extradited him to America in March, earning rare public praise from Donald Trump. Later, Pakistan’s army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, was invited to White House lunch in June, just over a month after a brief conflict with India. The field marshal returned to America for more talks this month.
Even so, ISKP still has about 4,000-6,000 fighters, including Tajiks, Uzbeks and Turks who mostly operate in eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan’s north and south-west, according to officials tracking the group. It is considered especially dangerous because it attracts experienced fighters and recruits aggressively online, often encouraging lone-wolf attacks abroad. And despite coming under pressure from Afghan and Pakistani authorities, it “retains the capability and intent to attack Western interests abroad with little to no warning”, General Kurilla told a congressional hearing on June 10.
Further co-operation from Pakistan could come with conditions attached. Pakistan is far more concerned about other insurgents on its territory who have separatist aims or who want to impose sharia law.
So Pakistan is now seeking American support for its efforts against those groups, especially the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), active in its northern tribal areas, and separatist groups in Balochistan. In 2024 alone, Pakistan says that 1,081 of its people were killed in terrorist attacks: a 45% increase from 2023.