Politics Of Terrorism: Did Pakistan DOOM Itself? | Dr. Hazrat Bahar

## Historical fault lines: the Durand Line and the unfinished map of South Asia The political tensions threading Afghanistan, Pakistan and India are not new accidents of policy but legacies of imperial cartography and contested nationhood. The 1893 Durand Line—drawn by the British between two imperial outposts—sliced through Pashtun and Baloch communities and left Afghanistan with a persistent grievance: the border was imposed, not consented to. That grievance carried into 1947 when Pakistan was born. Afghanistan’s initial refusal to accept Pakistan’s creation and its insistence that local populations should have had a choice planted durable mistrust between the two neighbors. This is more than historical memory. Ethnic kin across a porous frontier, competing national narratives and unresolved claims make the Afghanistan–Pakistan border a political fault line. When external shocks—Soviet invasion, Islamist mobilization, great-power competition—arrived in the later twentieth century, they did not land on a neutral, consolidated map. They landed into a region where state capacity, legitimacy and identity had already been unsettled. The Durand Line is both literal terrain and a metaphor for the ambiguities that have shaped regional politics ever since. ## The instrumentalization of militancy: strategy and convergence of interests One central through-line in the conversation is the purposeful cultivation of militant groups as instruments of state policy. Far from being a byproduct of chaos, the support networks that nurtured Islamist fighters in the late twentieth century were strategic choices. Pakistan’s military and intelligence apparatus developed and maintained relationships with various armed groups—not simply at the behest of outside powers, but because those groups served multiple overlapping objectives. During the 1970s and 1980s, the nexus of interests—Washington, select Gulf states, and Pakistan’s own strategic planners—converged around one pragmatic goal: field manpower to contest Soviet influence. The same networks and cadres were later repurposed for regional aims, notably pressure on India in Kashmir and leverage within Afghanistan. Madrasas, refugee settlements and transnational sanctuaries became reservoirs of recruits and ideologues. This was not an accidental spillover of U.S. policy; it was a deliberate, locally driven project that harmonized with foreign assistance and geopolitics. The result is an important conceptual point: responsibility for the rise of violent non-state actors was shared. External support mattered, but so did the choices of regional actors who treated irregular forces as low-cost instruments of policy. That duality is crucial when trying to trace current events back to their causes. ## Blowback and the limits of control One of the stark themes emerging from the exchange is blowback: the dilemma of a state that creates or tolerates proxies and then finds those proxies turning hostile or autonomous. Pakistan has been both victim and architect of militant violence. Its cities have experienced devastating attacks, and yet many of the same networks that have assaulted Pakistan’s security have been cultivated within its borders. The critical distinction is between groups that remain politically useful and those that defy or threaten state power. Some organizations have been tolerated or even indirectly supported so long as their activities align with strategic aims beyond Pakistan’s territory. Others—like the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) or Baloch separatist elements—have asserted agendas that directly challenge the central state, provoking a coercive response. That unpredictable split makes governance exceptionally difficult: dismantling an organization risks losing leverage abroad, while leaving it intact invites domestic instability. This bifurcated logic also explains diplomatic ambiguities. When a militant attack crosses into India or targets international interests, Pakistani officials may offer denials or emphasize the transnational roots of terrorism. Such responses reflect a reality in which control is partial, instrumental, and politically fraught. Admitting full responsibility would expose patterns of earlier strategic calculation; refusing to acknowledge it risks diplomatic isolation. The net effect is a policy stew of plausible deniability, selective enforcement, and episodic repression. ## Power behind the façade: military dominance and civilian fragility Pakistan’s domestic political structure is central to understanding its external behavior. The conversation highlights a long-running truth: the military is the decisive actor in Pakistani politics. Civilian governments have periodically held formal power, but sustainable policy—especially on security and foreign affairs—has often been shaped by the military establishment. Elected leaders who align with the army’s strategic outlook are tolerated; those who challenge it have repeatedly been removed, sometimes through overt coups, sometimes through judicial and political maneuvers. This institutional dominance matters for two reasons. First, it concentrates decision-making about proxies and regional strategy within an actor that privileges strategic depth and security calculus over parliamentary accountability. Second, it limits domestic avenues for debate or reform. When civilian leaders are co-opted or constrained, there is less public scrutiny of relationships with militant groups and fewer institutional checks on the use of irregular forces as instruments of policy. Recent political turbulence—high-profile ousters, mass protests, and the jailing of prominent politicians—exposes the fragility of civilian institutions. In a system where the military sets the parameters of acceptable politics, short-term tactical advantages can become enduring structural choices, including the maintenance of proxy networks even when they become liabilities. ## Pakistan, India and Afghanistan: asymmetric narratives and mutual recrimination Regional crises—most recently attacks in Kashmir and reciprocal allegations—are shaped by asymmetric narratives. India points to a history of Pakistan-based militant operations as evidence of state complicity. Pakistan, on the other hand, emphasizes its own suffering from terrorism and often points fingers at external provocations or the hybrid nature of insurgent networks. Afghanistan’s role in this triangular dynamic is often underestimated. The country has been both recipient and origin point of cross-border militant activity, refugee flows and political interference. Afghanistan’s own fractured politics—amplified by decades of war and abrupt regime change—turn it into a theater where Pakistan’s strategic anxieties about India, and vice versa, are played out through proxies, safe havens and diplomatic pressure. What emerges is a cyclical theater: attacks fuel retaliatory rhetoric and harden policies; hardened policies drive covert support for non-state actors; covert support produces attacks that then justify the original posture. Breaking this cycle requires not only border control and counterterror operations but also cooperative political frameworks capable of addressing the root diplomatic disputes and identity-driven grievances that fuel recruitment and sanctuary. ## Governance implications and the challenge of decoupling strategy from proxies If militant networks were once regarded as strategic assets, disentangling state policy from those networks represents a profound governance challenge. The Pakistani state faces a dilemma: clamp down decisively and lose leverage over regional disputes, or tolerate certain groups and risk domestic destabilization and international isolation. Decoupling requires several difficult institutional changes. Intelligence and security apparatuses must be reoriented towards national stabilization rather than short-term strategic leverage. Civilian institutions must gain genu

Politics Of Terrorism: Did Pakistan DOOM Itself? | Dr. Hazrat Bahar Did Pakistan lose control of the terrorism it created in the name of the USA or is the escalation of recent days part and parcel of how the politics of regional terrorism is conducted? To discuss all this, today I'm talking to Dr. Hazrat Bahar. Dr. Bahar is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Communication and Media Studies at Leipzig University in Germany. His research focuses on the transformation of Afghanistan's media system over the past two decades and he was recommended to me by a close friend as the right person to discus the ongoing Inida-Pakistan Crisis from the Afghan side, since the politics of the region is inextractably interlinked. #M2 Hello everybody, this is Pascal Lottaz from Neutrality Studies, and today I'm talking to Dr. Hazrat Bahar, who's a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Communication and Media Studies at Leipzig University in Germany. His research focuses on the transformation of Afghanistan's media system over the past two decades, and he was recommended to me by a very close friend as the right person to discuss the ongoing India-Pakistan crisis from the Afghan side, since the politics of the region is inextricably linked between these three countries. Dr. Bahar, welcome. #M3 Thank you very much, Pascal. I'm really happy, and once again, thank you very much for having me. #M2 It's great that you said yes to this because it's difficult to find somebody to talk about this very sensitive issue of the—let's say, I actually don't exactly know how to put it or where to start with it— but the subcontinent, the Indian subcontinent, and Central Asia are linked by a lot of history, a lot of ethnic commonalities and differences, and the colonial experience, of course. And interestingly enough, Afghanistan was not colonized, right? But modern-day Afghanistan is also, to some extent, the result of British colonialism. Could you maybe start by telling us how the division between Afghanistan and Pakistan still impacts the political situation today? #M3 Thank you very much. Actually, the very establishment of Pakistan was still questionable for people in Afghanistan, or from the official perspective of the Afghan government. You know that, as you mentioned, before the establishment of Pakistan, it was Afghanistan and the subcontinent, or India, -- 1 of 14 -- that shared a border. And later on, in 1893, the Durand Line was drawn. So, there is still a perspective in Afghanistan that it was forcefully imposed by the British colonial government in the region, and that Afghanistan was forced to sign that agreement, through which Afghanistan actually lost a significant portion of its territory to what is today Pakistan. And later on, when Pakistan was established in 1947, Afghanistan was the first country, I would say, that rejected the establishment of Pakistan, and there were many reasons for this. The first reason was that the people should have been allowed to decide whether to join Afghanistan, the newly established country of Pakistan, or India. But Pakistan actually didn't give that option to those people. Because when the Durand Line was drawn in 1893, it actually divided the same ethnicity— the Pashtun ethnicity—which is still the majority ethnicity in Afghanistan, and also, if I'm not mistaken, more than 40 million Pashtuns live in Pakistan. So, that ethnicity was divided. And it was not only the Pashtun ethnicity; they also divided the Baloch ethnicity in the southern part of Afghanistan. So, the nationalism in Afghanistan, I would say, was in full swing when Pakistan was being established. That was, I think, the main reason that Afghanistan actually rejected the establishment, and that actually planted the seeds of conflict between these two countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Although later on, Afghanistan relaxed their relationship and recognized the country, the Afghan government at that time still really wanted to let Pakistan know that the geography, the land that they had inherited, was not recognized by the Afghan government. So that's how the relationship, or the neighborhood, was actually established. And I would say that it was established in a rather tense situation. Later on, the situation further deteriorated in the late 2000s. And once again, when the political situation in Afghanistan deteriorated in the 1970s, Pakistan actually took advantage of that situation and supported those Islamic groups who later turned against the Afghan government. These groups fled to Pakistan, received training there, were armed there, and were supported both logistically and ideologically in Pakistan. They fought first against the Afghan government and then against the Soviet occupation. This kind of bitter experience between these two countries still exists. I would say that from the very establishment or the very birth of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan have never experienced a truly friendly relationship or a friendly neighborhood between the two countries. That kind of situation still exists. Whenever these two countries try to normalize their relationship, something happens. Still, Pakistan is somehow trying to encourage the Afghan government to officially recognize the Durand Line, and the Afghan government so far has rejected or has not wanted to officially recognize the Durand Line. That is just one part of the relationship, and there are many other factors that have played a role between these two countries. I would say negative role, because as I mentioned, these two countries have never so far had good relations or a friendly relationship. Although there were ups and downs, fluctuations in the relationship, particularly in the first era of the Taliban in the late 1990s, these two countries had relatively good relations because Pakistan was one of the countries—one of those three countries— -- 2 of 14 -- that officially recognized the government of the Taliban at that time. Apart from that, as far as I understand and from what I have read, these two countries have never experienced a good relationship. And this kind of vague or hatred-filled environment has negatively impacted the relationship between these two countries, I would say. #M2 And, you know, one of the things that really stunned a lot of us recently was—I think it was last week or already 10 days ago—when, right after the terror attack in Kashmir happened and these Indian tourists got killed, there was an interview with the foreign minister of Pakistan. The interviewer got him to say that, yeah, well, Pakistan used to support terrorist groups at the behest of the United States, and this has come back to haunt Pakistan quite a bit. This was a very surprising commentary coming from a foreign minister. Can you maybe put that into context? What was the role of terrorism? Because, you know, colloquially, people tend to think that Afghanistan has been a breeding ground for terrorism, but we've seen how this porous border—the Pashtun porous border— has been used in both directions for, well, let's call it maybe not terrorism, but violent political opposition. #M3 That's true, actually. I would say for me that was not a surprising comment, but what would make me surprised is that the official government—government officials of Pakistan—are accepting what they did. Maybe it's because of the U.S., or maybe because of their own national interest, I would say. I would cautiously disagree that it was only because of the U.S. or the West, because my understanding is that it was also because of the Kashmir issue with India. And as I mentioned, in order to upset the Afghan government, the Pakistani government actually nurtured and supported those religiously radical organizations, I would say. I don't know if we have to call them terrorists or insurgent groups—people who have been, I would say, radicalized, first against India, and secondly, also against the Afghan government. And later on, when the USSR or Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, you know, that was, in the bigger picture, when the Western bloc supported those who were fighting against the Soviet Union. And later on, they needed manpower. And that manpower came, first, from those people who studied in madrasas. I would say they were really prone to being easily radicalized or easily encouraged to fight against the Soviet Union, logistically and financially supported not only by the West, but also by some Gulf countries, particularly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. So those groups, I would say, emerged in Pakistan under the supervision of what they call the establishment—simply put, the military of Pakistan. They were trained, supported, and used not only for the strategic objectives of the West, but also for the strategic objectives of the Pakistani government. As I mentioned, they had this manpower to fight against India in Kashmir, and they had this manpower to somehow upset or fight against the Afghan government. In the 1970s, when -- 3 of 14 -- there were not yet terms like "terrorism" for these activities, they were still training, supporting, and financing those groups to announce or conduct so-called holy wars against the Afghan government in the 1970s. That was quite before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. So those people, those groups, were used by Pakistan not necessarily for the objectives or interests of only the Western countries, but also for their own interests. But now, actually, I would say the Taliban were having their sanctuaries in Pakistan when they were fighting against the Afghan government in—just like, sorry, in the last two decades. So they were considering the Taliban as a strategic asset, thinking that they would have a government in Afghanistan once they obtained or had control of the Afghan government or governance. And they would also be using those assets—the Taliban in the country—against India. But I would say so far that didn't yield the results they were expecting. But again, they were providing sanctuaries, training, and financial support for the Taliban too, in the last two decades, to fight against the Western countries. So, I would say it was not only in the interest of Western countries, but there were interests beyond this so-called Western interest narrative, because the Pakistani government still—I hesitate to say "still," but—they considered those groups like their national assets, who could serve their interests both in Kashmir, in Afghanistan, and anywhere else where they could send them and secure their interests. #M2 That's interesting. Do you view this comment of the Pakistani foreign minister as somewhat misleading, as in trying to blame the US for a problem that was clearly a Pakistani strategy from the beginning—to use clandestine operations in its near abroad, in both Afghanistan and in India? Am I understanding that correctly? #M3 Exactly. That's exactly what I was trying to say. Again, it's not just that the government of Pakistan actually supported, provided financial support, sanctuaries, and training for those groups because of Western interests or U.S. interests; their own interests were also intertwined. So there was a convergence of interests between the U.S., the Western countries, and Pakistan in supporting those organizations, which these days are turning against Pakistan. #M2 So in a sense, what we're seeing now is Pakistan being unable to control—because Pakistan was also the victim of terrorist attacks, right? It's not just India and Afghanistan; I mean, they happen in Pakistan as well. And in a sense, Pakistan is losing control over this force that it itself created. Do -- 4 of 14 -- you think they are now admitting that? Is there now a change in strategy? Or is this still embedded in the way that, let's say, the military apparatus in Pakistan—which is huge—to some extent still works? #M3 I would say I wonder if it's still turning against the Pakist