In what is seen as a possible policy shift, Afghanistan’s Islamic Emirate government has been taking action against elements facilitating cross-border attacks into Pakistan — marking a breakthrough that has led to renewed diplomatic momentum between Kabul and Islamabad.

According to Pakistan’s Express Tribune, while public discourse over the past month focused on rising tensions between Pakistan and India, behind the scenes, Pakistan and Afghanistan made significant strides in repairing a strained relationship long marred by security concerns.

At the core of Islamabad’s frustration has been the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and other militant groups, which they say operate from inside Afghanistan. 

Things however started to change in March, when a high-level Pakistani delegation led by Special Envoy for Afghanistan, Muhammad Sadiq Khan, visited Kabul, the Express Tribune reported. 

According to sources familiar with the closed-door meetings, Pakistani officials were, for the first time, convinced that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) leadership was taking Pakistan’s concerns seriously.

As part of this shift, the IEA reportedly began targeting Afghan nationals who had either joined the TTP or were recruiting others to do so. Several individuals were arrested and prosecuted, according to security sources.

The IEA’s response is believed to have led to a notable reduction in suicide attacks, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and helped ease tensions between the two neighbors.

The Express Tribune reported that these developments set the stage for a landmark visit by Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar to Kabul on April 19 — the first by a Pakistani foreign minister in three years. 

During the visit, both sides agreed on a renewed commitment: Afghanistan pledged not to allow its territory to be used for attacks against Pakistan, and in return, Pakistan eased trade restrictions, including lifting the requirement of bank guarantees for Afghan importers.

The IEA government further won Islamabad’s confidence by reportedly apprehending Afghan nationals who had facilitated the infiltration of over 70 terrorists into Pakistan following the Pahalgam attack. 

All infiltrators were neutralized near the North Waziristan border in what officials described as the largest single-day anti-terror operation since Pakistan’s post-9/11 campaign, Express Tribune reported.

Despite the progress, Pakistani officials caution that more needs to be done. “It’s a positive start, but we expect the Taliban (IEA) government to take irreversible steps,” one official said on condition of anonymity.

China is believed to have played a key behind-the-scenes role in encouraging dialogue between the two countries. 

On May 21, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi hosted an unannounced trilateral meeting in Beijing with the foreign ministers of Pakistan and Afghanistan. 

Following the talks, both countries expressed their intent to upgrade diplomatic ties, including plans to exchange ambassadors—a move confirmed by Pakistani officials, although formalities remain.

China was the first to appoint a full-time ambassador to Kabul under IEA rule and accept an IEA envoy in Beijing. Russia and Turkey are reportedly considering similar moves.

Pakistani officials say that, despite ongoing concerns, the evolving regional landscape demands a pragmatic approach and that the recent spike in military tensions with India has only reinforced Islamabad’s interest in stabilizing its western frontier.

Meanwhile, India has also started re-engaging with the Islamic Emirate. 

Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar recently held talks with his Afghan counterpart, breaking a 20-year policy of diplomatic non-engagement with the Islamic Emirate.

Analysts suggest the Beijing meeting was a strategic message from China—not only to support regional stability but also to signal to India that Kabul’s future may lie in alignment with Beijing and Islamabad.

Islamic Emirate’s response to Islamabad’s accusations

Leading up to this thaw between the two countries, Pakistan continued to accuse Afghanistan of not standing against militants in the country. The IEA however repeatedly denied these allegations and said on numerous occasions that it will not allow any individual or group to pose a threat to another country from Afghanistan. 

Just last month, the IEA’s deputy spokesperson Hamdullah Fitrat dismissed allegations that armed groups are using Afghan territory to launch attacks into Pakistan. 

He described the claims as “false” and accused Pakistan of deflecting blame for its own failures.

“Pakistan’s security problems are its internal matter,” Fitrat said. “Blaming Afghanistan is a way for Islamabad to avoid accountability for its own shortcomings.”

These remarks were made in response to comments by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who, speaking in London in April, stated that terrorist groups were operating from Afghan soil. 

Just five days later, however, the high-level Pakistani delegation, led by Ishaq Dar, visited Kabul for talks with senior IEA officials, including Prime Minister Mullah Hassan Akhund.

The one-day visit was on the back of an official invitation extended by Islamic Emirate Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi.

India struck multiple sites inside Pakistani-controlled territory early on Wednesday, two weeks after a deadly attack on tourists in the disputed Kashmir plunged relations between the nuclear-armed neighbours to new lows.

India accused Pakistan of backing the massacre, in which 26 men, mostly Indian Hindus, were killed, a charge Pakistan denies.

Soldiers on each side have since exchanged fire along their de facto border, with each blaming the other for shooting first.

Both countries have in the past two weeks expelled diplomats and citizens, ordered the border shut and closed their airspace for each other.

India and Pakistan have a complex and largely hostile relationship that is rooted in a multitude of historical and political events, most notably the partition of British India in August 1947.

Two years after World War II, the United Kingdom formally dissolved British India, dividing it into two new sovereign nations: the Union of India and Pakistan. 

The partitioning of the former British colony resulted in the displacement of up to 15 million people, with the death toll estimated to have reached between several hundred thousand and one million people as Hindus and Muslims migrated in opposite directions across the Radcliffe Line to reach India and Pakistan, respectively.

In 1950, India emerged as a secular republic with a Hindu-majority population and a large Muslim minority. Shortly afterwards, in 1956, Pakistan emerged as an Islamic republic with a Muslim-majority population and a large Hindu minority; it later lost most of its Hindu population following its defeat in the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, which saw the secession of East Pakistan as the independent country of Bangladesh.

Since 1947, India and Pakistan have fought three major wars and one undeclared war, and have also engaged in numerous armed skirmishes and military standoffs; the Kashmir conflict has served as the catalyst for every war between the two states, with the exception of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, which instead occurred alongside the Bangladesh Liberation War.

Here’s a look at multiple conflicts between the two countries since their bloody partition in 1947.

1947 — Months after British India is partitioned into a predominantly Hindu India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan, the two young nations fight their first war over control of Muslim-majority Kashmir, then a kingdom ruled by a Hindu monarch. The war killed thousands before ending in 1948.

1949 — A UN-brokered ceasefire line leaves Kashmir divided between India and Pakistan, with the promise of a UN-sponsored vote that would enable the region’s people to decide whether to be part of Pakistan or India. That vote has never been held.

1965 — The rivals fight their second war over Kashmir. Thousands are killed in inconclusive fighting before a ceasefire is brokered by the Soviet Union and the United States. Negotiations in Tashkent ran until January 1966, ending in both sides giving back territories they seized during the war and withdrawing their armies.

A Pakistani soldier aims his rifle as a fellow soldier runs for cover during Indian shelling of Pakistani positions in East Pakistan on December 2, 1971. (AP)

1971 — India intervenes in a war over the independence of East Pakistan, which ends with the territory breaking away as the new country of Bangladesh. An estimated three million people were killed in the conflict.

1972 — India and Pakistan sign a peace accord, renaming the ceasefire line in Kashmir as the Line of Control. Both sides deploy more troops along the frontier, turning it into a heavily fortified stretch of military outposts.

Indian troops are on the move in Kashmir against guerrilla forces during the second war over Kashmir on September 6, 1965. (AP)

1989 — Kashmiri dissidents, with support from Pakistan, launch a bloody rebellion against Indian rule. Indian troops respond with brutal measures, intensifying diplomatic and military skirmishes between New Delhi and Islamabad.

1999 — Pakistani soldiers and Kashmiri fighters seize several Himalayan peaks on the Indian side. India responds with aerial bombardments and artillery. At least 1,000 combatants are killed over 10 weeks, and a worried world fears the fighting could escalate to nuclear conflict. The US eventually steps in to mediate, ending the fighting.

2016 — Militants sneak into an army base in Indian-controlled Kashmir, killing at least 18 soldiers. India responds by sending special forces inside Pakistani-held territory, later claiming to have killed multiple suspected rebels in “surgical strikes.” Pakistan denies that the strikes took place, but it leads to days of major border skirmishes. Combatants and civilians on both sides are killed.

2019 — The two sides again come close to war after a Kashmiri insurgent rams an explosive-laden car into a bus carrying Indian soldiers, killing 40. India carries out airstrikes in Pakistani territory and claims to have struck a militant training facility. Pakistan later shoots down an Indian warplane and captures a pilot. He is later released, de-escalating tensions.

2025 — Militants attack Indian tourists in the region’s resort town of Pahalgam and kill 26 men, most of them Hindus. India blames Pakistan, which denies it. 

India vows revenge on the attackers as tensions rise to their highest point since 2019. Both countries cancel visas for each other’s citizens, recall diplomats, shut their only land border crossing and close their airspaces to each other. New Delhi also suspends a crucial water-sharing treaty.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s blistering strikes on Yemen followed weeks of warnings to the Houthis to stop attacking Red Sea shipping – or else.

Yet the Houthis continued firing drones and missiles, seemingly goading the United States to follow through on its threats. That has raised a question for some experts: Did the Houthis want a war with America? And if so, why?

Gerald Feierstein, a former U.S. ambassador to Yemen, is among those who think the United States has given the Houthis exactly what they wanted: a fight.

“Absolutely they have been trying to provoke U.S. retaliation,” Feierstein told Reuters.

“They’ve been confident that they could withstand whatever we were going to do. They have seen they win popular support.”

The Houthis, who have controlled most of Yemen for nearly a decade, said five fighters had been killed in a total of 73 air strikes. They vowed to retaliate and continue their attacks on shipping, which they say are intended to support Palestinians against Israel, a popular cause in Yemen.

The U.S. military said late on Friday it had launched another strike targeting a radar site.

After the initial U.S. and British strikes, drone footage on the Houthis’ al-Masirah TV showed hundreds of thousands of people in Sanaa chanting slogans denouncing Israel and the United States. Crowds gathered in other Yemeni cities as well.

Experts say much of the Houthi confidence comes from having resisted years of attacks from Saudi Arabia. But a U.S.-led campaign against the group could be very different.

U.S. Lieutenant General Douglas Sims, the director of the Joint Staff, told reporters on Thursday that the strikes hit 28 locations with more than 150 munitions. Reviewing the damage, he said he hoped the Houthis would not invite that kind of destruction.

“My guess is if you were operating a ballistic missile launcher last night, you certainly didn’t want the strike. But, no, I would hope they didn’t want us to strike,” Sims said.

MOUNTAIN FIGHTERS

In pre-recorded speeches and sermons, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, the enigmatic leader of Yemen’s Houthi fighters, asserts that his movement is under siege because of its religion.

Al-Houthi established a reputation as a fierce battlefield commander before emerging as head of the Houthi movement, mountain fighters who have been battling a Saudi-led military coalition since 2015 in a conflict that has killed tens of thousands, devastated Yemen’s economy and left millions hungry.

Under the direction of al-Houthi, who is in his 40s, the group has acquired tens of thousands of fighters and a huge arsenal of armed drones and ballistic missiles, largely supplied by Iran.

Following the strikes, Sims and other U.S. officials acknowledged that the Houthis would probably make good on their threats to retaliate.

On Friday, the Houthis fired an anti-ship ballistic missile into the Red Sea, the Pentagon said.

A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said far from being deterred, the Houthis might see the likely low death toll among their fighters in the strikes as a success for the group, even if their capabilities have been degraded.

“Someone’s definition of success really depends on their perspective,” the official said.

With tensions soaring, the price of Brent crude oil rose 1% on Friday on concern that supplies could be disrupted. Commercial ship tracking data showed at least nine oil tankers stopping or diverting from the Red Sea.

MORE STRIKES?

Michael Mulroy, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East under the Trump administration, said the Pentagon should prepare for additional military action.

“The U.S. should start planning to increase our response to further attacks in the Red Sea or Syria and Iraq,” he said.

“And Iran’s IRGC should be included in those targets,” he added, using an acronym for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Iran champions the Houthis as part of its regional “axis of resistance” – a collection of Iran-backed groups that includes Palestinian militant group Hamas and militia in Iraq and Syria.

The United States accuses Iran of enabling the Houthi Red Sea attacks, providing the military capabilities and intelligence to carry them out.

The Houthis deny being puppets of Tehran and say they are fighting a corrupt system and regional aggression.

Still, Feierstein cautions that the Houthi defiance of the United States and its allies helps burnish their brand in the Middle East, a concern shared by some current U.S. officials.

“Regionally, it raises the Houthi profile. It puts them in the first rank of Iranian affiliates in the ‘Axis of Resistance,'” Feierstein said.

“We shouldn’t give the Houthis what they want, which is exactly what we did.”

Analysis by Reuters staff Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali