Editorial
The Taliban did not emerge from Afghan ballots. No election brought them to power. No referendum endorsed their brutality. They seized Kabul at gunpoint, and ordinary Afghans, the farmer, the schoolgirl, the shopkeeper, have been paying the price ever since. Half a century of suffering does not constitute consent. It constitutes captivity.
The world must stop confusing Taliban control with Afghan will. These are two entirely different things. The Afghan people are hostages inside their own homeland, not supporters of their jailers. Any policy that treats the Taliban regime as a legitimate representative of Afghanistan insults every Afghan who has ever buried a daughter’s dream or watched a son disappear into a detention cell.
Pakistan stands at a crossroads. The instinct has long been to manage Afghanistan through proxies and calculated disorder. That instinct has failed. It has produced blowback, terrorism, and a neighbour that exports chaos rather than commerce. The smarter investment is not in the Taliban’s survival but in the Afghan people’s future.
Islamabad must pivot decisively. Invest in Afghan civil society. Support education, livelihoods, and political alternatives inside Afghanistan. Help build conditions in which Afghans themselves can reclaim their agency and dislodge a government that rules through fear alone. A stable, representative Afghanistan is not Pakistan’s enemy. It is Pakistan’s greatest strategic opportunity.
When Afghans choose their own government, a government answerable to them, the entire region breathes differently. Trade expands. Militancy shrinks. Borders become bridges rather than battlegrounds.
Pakistan must choose between the failed comfort of Taliban accommodation and the bold reward of genuine Afghan partnership. Dislodging an illegitimate regime and empowering the Afghan people is not idealism. It is the most hardheaded realism available. Both nations win, or both nations continue to bleed.
