They played with fire, and now it’s burning down their house. For decades, Pakistan treated the Taliban like a junkyard dog—fed it, trained it, kept it on a leash, and sicced it on its enemies. But the leash snapped. Now that dog is loose, snarling, and it’s got its teeth in Islamabad’s leg.
The betrayal was brutal but inevitable. The Taliban bit the hand that fed them, turned their AKs on the very government that built them. Pakistani intelligence had been their lifeline—arming, training, sheltering them, giving them a safe haven when U.S. drones darkened Afghan skies. But today, those same fighters are lighting up the border with gunfire, blowing up Pakistani outposts, and calling Islamabad the enemy. They’re not just picking fights; they’re questioning Pakistan’s right to exist as it is.
Pashtun nationalism is their new battle cry, and Pakistan’s shaky borders are their next target. The Taliban claim that the Durand Line—the old British-drawn border slicing through Pashtun lands—is illegitimate. Their goal? A unified Pashtun emirate, stretching deep into Pakistan’s northwest. Islamabad isn’t just losing control of its own creation; it’s watching the map of its country start to melt.
The Boomerang Comes Back Hard
Pakistan always feared Pashtun separatism. Ever since its founding in 1947, it knew the northern frontier was a time bomb. The Durand Line had left millions of Pashtuns stranded on the "wrong side" of the border, and Kabul never let Islamabad forget it. Afghanistan never recognized the border. Never accepted it. Never stopped dreaming of reclaiming "its" Pashtun lands.
And Pakistan? Instead of facing that problem head-on, it tried to outsource the solution to jihadists.
The Taliban weren’t just a byproduct of war; they were Pakistan’s long-shot bet on controlling Afghanistan and keeping its own Pashtun population in check. The thinking was simple: if you keep the radicals busy fighting in Kabul, they won’t cause trouble in Peshawar.
For a while, it worked. The Taliban became Islamabad’s best asset, a handy weapon to use against both Afghan governments and India. But history loves poetic justice. What was once a tool has now become an existential threat. The Taliban won their war in Afghanistan—and now they’ve set their sights on Pakistan.
The Puppet Cut Its Strings
Back in the 1980s, when the Soviets rolled into Afghanistan, Pakistan had a choice to make. It could either watch its backyard turn into a Soviet satellite or get its hands dirty. So it poured everything into the Afghan mujahideen. Weapons, training, cash—it all flowed through Islamabad with a wink and a nod from the CIA.
But as the years passed, something changed. The warlords of the anti-Soviet resistance started looking more like liabilities than assets. Too divided, too unpredictable. Pakistan’s intelligence services needed something tighter, meaner, more disciplined. And so, they picked their golden boys—the Taliban.
Pakistani madrasas became their breeding grounds. Religious schools turned into military academies. Young Pashtun refugees, displaced by war, were radicalized, armed, and sent back across the border to fight.
When the Soviets left and Afghanistan plunged into civil war, the Taliban were Pakistan’s ace in the hole. Islamabad backed them to the hilt, confident that they could install a friendly regime in Kabul—one that would never challenge Pakistan’s dominance.
But the thing about puppets is, sometimes they get tired of the strings.
Pakistan’s Biggest Mistake: Saving the Taliban When It Should Have Let Them Die
By the mid-1990s, the Taliban were cornered. They were about to lose. Surrounded, outgunned, on the ropes. This should have been the moment Islamabad cut ties and let them collapse. But no—Pakistan doubled down.
Jane’s Defence Weekly reported that Pakistan rushed in a fleet of four-wheel-drive pickups, allowing the Taliban to break out of their encirclement and go back on the offensive. British intelligence reports confirmed that Pakistani nationals—including ex-military personnel—were fighting alongside them.
Islamabad didn’t just prop up the Taliban. It built them into an unstoppable force.
And now? That force is knocking on its door, guns in hand.
The U.S. invasion in 2001 forced Pakistan into a corner. Publicly, it had to play nice with Washington. Privately, it kept the Taliban on life support.
The game worked for twenty years. Pakistan let American supplies roll through its ports while letting Taliban fighters hide in its mountains. It took billions in U.S. aid while making sure the insurgents could always regroup.
But in 2021, the game collapsed. The Taliban took Kabul again—only this time, they didn’t need Pakistan anymore. And instead of showing gratitude, they started looking at Pakistan the same way they looked at the Americans: as a problem to be dealt with.
Now, Pakistan is fighting on three fronts:
- The Afghan Taliban, who are challenging its borders and destabilizing its northwest.
- The Pakistani Taliban (TTP), who are waging an outright insurgency inside the country.
- Baloch separatists, who are blowing up infrastructure and targeting Chinese interests in the south.
Meanwhile, ISIS-K is lurking in the shadows, killing Taliban fighters and launching terror attacks deep inside Pakistan.
Islamabad is out of options. It can’t control the Taliban. It can’t crush the insurgency. It can’t pacify the separatists.
The fire it lit is now burning out of control.
Pakistan is bleeding out. Its military can’t fight everyone at once. The Taliban aren’t going anywhere. The TTP is getting stronger. Balochistan is slipping further from Islamabad’s grasp. And with China pouring money into the region, new enemies are lining up.
For decades, Pakistan used extremists like poker chips, playing both sides, thinking it could always cash out when needed. But now, the house is collapsing.
The Taliban aren’t the ones who need Pakistan anymore. Pakistan is the one trapped.
Islamabad thought it could keep playing kingmaker. Now it’s just another player—clutching a losing hand.
They thought they could control the beast. They thought they could pull the strings, play the long game, and manipulate jihadists like pieces on a chessboard. But the game is over. The puppets have cut their strings, the fire they lit is now a wildfire, and Islamabad is choking on the smoke.
For years, Pakistan bankrolled, trained, and shielded the Taliban, treating them as a geopolitical asset. But now, that same Taliban is knocking on Pakistan’s door with a battering ram. They’ve got grievances, they’ve got guns, and they’re done pretending to be Pakistan’s lapdogs.
It’s not just border skirmishes anymore. The Taliban are staking a claim on Pakistan’s northwest, pushing the idea that Pashtun lands belong under their rule, not under some colonial-era border drawn by long-dead Brits. And they’re backing it up with fortifications, raids, and outright war talk.
For Islamabad, this isn’t just a security crisis—it’s an identity crisis.
Nobody saw this coming—at least, nobody in Pakistan’s military-intelligence circles.
For decades, the Taliban were Islamabad’s ace in the hole. Pakistan built them, fed them, and kept them alive—whether it was supplying them with arms in the ‘90s, giving them safe havens after 9/11, or looking the other way when they launched attacks on American and Afghan forces.
Without Pakistan, there is no Taliban. Period.
And yet, in 2021, when the Taliban swept back into power in Kabul, they didn’t just thank Pakistan and move on—they turned on it.
They remember how Pakistan played both sides, how Islamabad let the U.S. drone-strike their leaders, how Pakistani intelligence handed over key Taliban figures in the War on Terror. To them, Islamabad isn’t a friend—it’s a backstabbing opportunist.
And now, with their new government entrenched in Afghanistan, the Taliban don’t need Pakistan anymore.
They’ve got bigger plans—starting with erasing the Durand Line, the British-imposed border dividing Pashtuns between Afghanistan and Pakistan. For the Taliban, Pakistan is standing in the way of their vision of a greater Pashtun emirate.
And so, the guns are turning east.
Here’s the thing—Pakistan’s military is stronger than the Taliban, hands down. Bigger arsenal, better trained, better equipped. In a straight fight, Islamabad wins.
But the Taliban? They don’t fight straight.
They humiliated the Soviets, they humiliated the Americans, and now they’re ready to bleed Pakistan dry—one ambush, one IED, one border raid at a time.
This isn’t going to be a conventional war. It’s going to be a drawn-out insurgency, a war of attrition—the kind of war Pakistan’s military isn’t built to handle.
And what makes it even worse? The Taliban have allies inside Pakistan.
The northern Pashtun regions aren’t just “border areas”—they’re potential Taliban strongholds. Every time the Pakistani military bombs a Taliban hideout, they create more recruits. Every village that gets flattened, the Taliban gain another wave of fighters.
The Pakistani state is fighting not just an enemy, but an idea—and ideas are a hell of a lot harder to kill than insurgents.
Balochistan: Pakistan’s Other War That’s About to Get Worse
But here’s the real kicker—the Taliban aren’t even Pakistan’s only problem.
While Islamabad is trying to contain the Taliban insurgency in the northwest, the south is on fire too.
Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest, most resource-rich, and most unstable province, has been a war zone for decades. The Baloch separatists—led by the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA)—have been waging a low-intensity insurgency since the 1970s.
And now, it’s escalating.
Baloch rebels aren’t just fighting for independence anymore—they’re fighting against China.
Beijing has been pouring billions into Balochistan through its China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)—building roads, ports, and industrial hubs. For Pakistan, this is an economic lifeline. For the Baloch rebels, this is a foreign occupation.
So, they’ve started targeting Chinese workers, blowing up infrastructure, and attacking Pakistani military forces protecting Chinese interests.
The Baloch separatists used to operate freely out of Afghanistan—but after the Taliban took over in 2021, they got kicked out.
Why?
- Ideology clash – The BLA are secular nationalists; the Taliban are hardline Islamists. That mix was never going to work.
- Territorial disputes – The Baloch homeland extends into Afghanistan, and the Taliban aren’t about to give up land for someone else’s independence cause.
- Power struggle – The Pakistani Taliban (TTP) is making inroads in Balochistan, competing for recruits and influence.
Right now, the Taliban and the Baloch rebels aren’t at war. But with both trying to expand their influence inside Pakistan, it’s only a matter of time before they clash.
For decades, Pakistan played the world’s most dangerous balancing act.
- It took U.S. money and weapons while secretly helping the Taliban kill American soldiers.
- It harbored terrorists while calling itself a partner in the War on Terror.
- It used extremists as pawns, thinking it could keep them under control.
Now?
The house of cards is collapsing.
- The Afghan Taliban are challenging Pakistan’s borders and turning its tribal areas into a warzone.
- The Pakistani Taliban (TTP) are waging a full-blown insurgency inside the country.
- Baloch separatists are escalating their fight for independence, attacking Pakistan and its Chinese allies.
- ISIS-K is in the mix too, fueling chaos wherever it can.
And worst of all? Pakistan is running out of options.
The army can’t fight everyone at once. The intelligence services can’t keep playing both sides. The country is fracturing, and nobody in Islamabad seems to have a plan to stop it.
For years, Pakistan thought it could outsmart history, outplay its enemies, and outmaneuver the chaos it unleashed. It built the Taliban, used them as a geopolitical weapon, and convinced itself that this militant force would always remain under its control. But now, the boomerang has come back full force.
The Taliban isn’t just a rogue force anymore—it’s a rival government with an ethno-nationalist mission, one that threatens Pakistan’s own territorial integrity. Islamabad spent decades arming, sheltering, and funding these militants. Now they want a piece of Pakistan itself.
And just when Pakistan thought it couldn’t get worse, it finds itself fighting a second war in the south—this time against Baloch separatists, who have declared war not just on Islamabad, but on its biggest economic partner: China.
Pakistan wanted to be the puppeteer of South Asia’s militant networks.
Now, the strings are broken, and the marionettes are marching toward Islamabad with AK-47s and grievances.
Nobody in the Pakistani military-intelligence complex ever imagined that their greatest foreign policy asset would become their greatest domestic threat.
For decades, the Taliban were Pakistan’s ace in the hole—a tool to control Afghanistan, to counter Indian influence, and to keep its own Pashtun population in check. The thinking was simple: Keep the radicals busy fighting in Kabul so they don’t turn their guns on Peshawar.
But then the Taliban won their war in Afghanistan. And they started looking east.
Pakistan’s nightmare scenario is here: the Taliban is no longer a tool—it’s an enemy.
The Durand Line, the British-imposed border dividing Pashtuns between Afghanistan and Pakistan, has always been a sore spot. Kabul never recognized it, and neither have the Taliban. But now, with the Taliban firmly in power, they’re openly challenging Pakistan’s claim to its Pashtun territories.
In the fall of 2024, the Taliban began fortifying positions along the Pakistan border, moving troops, and preparing for something bigger than just border skirmishes. Islamabad saw the writing on the wall: this wasn’t just posturing—this was preparation for war.
Pakistan struck first, launching airstrikes and ground offensives, destroying Taliban forward bases, and pushing fighters back across the border.
For a moment, it looked like a decisive victory.
But wars in this region are never won in a single battle.
Taliban Don’t Fight Wars. They Bleed You to Death.
Pakistan’s military is stronger than the Taliban. It has a real air force, better weapons, more troops. On paper, Islamabad should win any conventional battle.
But the Taliban don’t fight conventionally.
They humbled the Soviets. They humiliated the Americans. And now, they’re preparing to drag Pakistan into the same kind of never-ending war—one that doesn’t play out in tank battles, but in ambushes, IEDs, assassinations, and a slow, grinding insurgency.
And here’s where Pakistan’s real nightmare begins:
The Taliban have sympathizers inside Pakistan.
The Pashtun regions of northern Pakistan aren’t just a “border”—they’re a stronghold of tribal and religious loyalty that Islamabad has never fully controlled. The more the Pakistani military bombs villages, cracks down on insurgents, and escalates the conflict, the more it pushes young Pashtuns into Taliban ranks.
Islamabad’s military can clear out Taliban fighters from an area.
But it can’t clear out an ideology—especially not one that is spreading across its own territory.
And if that wasn’t enough? Balochistan is burning too.
While Pakistan tries to contain the Taliban insurgency in the north, the south is already in flames.
Balochistan—the country’s largest and most resource-rich province—has been in a state of rebellion for decades. But now, that rebellion is turning into something far worse.
The Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) is no longer just fighting Pakistan—they’re fighting China too.
Beijing has poured billions of dollars into Balochistan through its China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)—building roads, ports, and factories. For Islamabad, this is an economic lifeline.
For the Baloch separatists, it’s a foreign occupation.
So they’ve started bombing infrastructure, assassinating Chinese workers, and attacking Pakistani military installations protecting Beijing’s investments.
For years, the BLA operated freely out of Afghanistan—but once the Taliban took over in 2021, they were forced to flee.
Why?
- Ideology – The BLA is a secular nationalist movement. The Taliban are radical Islamists. That mix was never going to work.
- Territorial dispute – The Baloch homeland extends into Afghanistan, and the Taliban won’t give up land for someone else’s independence cause.
- Competition – The Pakistani Taliban (TTP) is expanding in Balochistan, recruiting fighters and pushing the BLA out.
Right now, the Taliban and Baloch separatists aren’t fighting each other.
But give it time—because eventually, they will clash for influence inside Pakistan.
ISIS-K: Pakistan’s Worst Nightmare is Now Inside Its Borders
As if the Taliban insurgency and the Baloch separatist war weren’t enough, Pakistan is now grappling with a third deadly force—one that doesn’t play by any rules, doesn’t recognize borders, and sees even the Taliban as too soft.
Enter ISIS-K, also known as Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP)—the same group that carried out the Crocus City Hall massacre in Moscow in 2024.
Unlike the Taliban, ISIS-K doesn’t want an Islamic emirate—they want a global caliphate. They make no deals. They accept no compromises. And they have zero tolerance for anything that doesn’t align with their extreme ideology.
The Taliban hate them because they challenge their authority in Afghanistan. The Baloch separatists hate them because they’re destabilizing Pakistan even further. And Islamabad? It fears them—but at the same time, some in Pakistan’s intelligence circles might see them as a useful tool.
The Taliban suspect that Pakistan is secretly helping ISIS-K. The Baloch rebels take it even further—they believe Islamabad is actively using jihadists as a weapon to weaken its enemies.
Is there proof? Not really. But in a region where alliances shift overnight and terrorism is a constant state of existence, nothing can be ruled out.
Islamabad is at war on three fronts—and losing ground on all of them:
- The Afghan Taliban are attacking its borders, rejecting its legitimacy, and laying claim to Pashtun lands.
- The Baloch separatists are ramping up their insurgency, blowing up infrastructure, and targeting China’s investments.
- ISIS-K is waging a campaign of pure terror, destabilizing the entire region and dragging Pakistan into a deeper quagmire.
For decades, Pakistan thought it could control the chaos. It used militant groups as chess pieces, playing them against rivals in Afghanistan, India, and beyond. It harbored jihadists, hoping to direct their rage outward rather than inward.
But now?
The chaos has turned inward. The chessboard is gone. And the pieces are moving on their own.
Pakistan fed the fire, thinking it could contain it. But that fire is now burning Islamabad to the ground.
The Taliban, the Baloch rebels, ISIS-K—they are not stopping.
If Islamabad can’t contain this three-front war, Pakistan itself could collapse, spiraling into civil war, factionalism, and complete state failure.
Pakistan created the Taliban.
Pakistan sustained the Taliban.
Now, Pakistan is fighting for survival against the Taliban.
The irony is brutal. The monster they fed is now devouring them whole.
Islamabad spent decades thinking it was the master manipulator, the kingmaker in South Asia. But now, it’s clear:
The game is playing them.