EMBOLDENED PAK BODES ILL FOR REGIONAL PEACE

Trump's support has encouraged Pakistan's military to stir up trouble along the Durand Line and further weaken its civil institutions. The fallout may reverberate in other parts of the subcontinent

- PINAK RANJAN CHAKRAVARTY

THE Durand Line has again become a flashpoint and the rumbles have grown louder over the last two months.

First, Pakistan carried out a strike on Kabul in October, which it claimed targeted the head of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Later that month, skirmishes ensued between the Afghan Taliban forces and the Pakistani military along the 2,640-km border, with casualties claimed on both sides. Qatar and Türkiye weighed in to organise peace talks, but three rounds of parleys ended in a deadlock, though an unwritten ceasefire was agreed upon.

Earlier this month, the fragile truce was shattered when a suicide bomber killed 12 people in Islamabad. A day earlier, an explosive-laden vehicle had rammed into the gate of a military school in South Waziristan. The conflict ratcheted up this Monday, when three suicide bombers targeted the headquarters of a Pakistani paramilitary force in Peshawar, killing six. On Tuesday, a Pakistani airstrike across the Durand Line killed nine children and a woman.

The primary bone of contention between the neighbours is the TTP, apart from Pakistan forcing Afghan refugees to return and blocking Afghan trade routes. Pakistan has accused Kabul of giving safe haven to the TTP, which has claimed most attacks on Pakistan's forces and civilians in recent years. The outfit, which emerged in 2007 after a merger of various Pashtun factions to assist the Afghan Taliban against the American and Nato occupying forces, has been designated a 'terrorist' organisation by the US and the UN working in tandem.

Kabul, which has denied harbouring the TTP, has countered that Islamabad is supporting the Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K) and drone flights over Afghan airspace. Pakistan obfuscated the reply because it has agreements in place to allow American drones flying from its bases for surveillance over Iran.