Arshad Mahmood Awan
There is something revealing about a defence minister who warns of air strikes against a neighbouring country in one breath and admits his nation helped create the very problem in the next. Khawaja Asif did precisely that during his recent visit to Berlin. In separate interviews with Deutsche Welle and France 24, Pakistan’s defence minister issued a stark warning to the Taliban government in Kabul: Islamabad will not rule out military operations inside Afghan territory against the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. The TTP, he said plainly, continues to strike inside Pakistan with impunity. Military action, in his words, remains firmly on the table until Kabul provides meaningful and verifiable assurances of peace. These are not the careful words of a diplomat. They are the blunt declarations of a state under sustained pressure on its western frontier.
The warning itself is not surprising. Pakistan has suffered dozens of deadly attacks attributed to the TTP in recent months. The Afghan Taliban, for their part, have shown neither the willingness nor perhaps the capacity to restrain a militant network that shares ideological roots with their own movement. This is the central contradiction Islamabad has struggled to resolve since the Taliban returned to power in Kabul in 2021. Pakistan had long invested in that return, treating the Afghan Taliban as a strategic asset. Now that same asset refuses to act against militants who cross the Durand Line to kill Pakistani soldiers and civilians. The frontier, which was never truly stable, has grown more volatile. Khawaja Asif’s warning reflects that reality.
But the minister went further than military threats. He described the current relationship between India and Afghanistan as “pretty cosy” and suggested that militants targeting Pakistan are being financially and logistically sponsored by New Delhi. This is a familiar charge in Pakistani strategic discourse, and it carries genuine weight in Islamabad’s calculations even when direct evidence remains contested. The argument implies a deliberate strategy of regional encirclement, with India using Afghan soil to keep Pakistan perpetually destabilised. Whether one accepts this reading entirely or with reservations, it explains why Pakistani policymakers feel besieged on multiple fronts at once. The threat, as they see it, is not only military but geopolitical, a coordinated effort to exhaust and isolate Pakistan from both east and west.
What distinguishes Khawaja Asif’s recent remarks from the standard script of Pakistani strategic communication is his willingness to trace the roots of the current crisis back to Pakistan’s own decisions. He said it plainly: this is a price Pakistan is paying. He was referring to two specific moments in history. The first was the 1980s, when Pakistan under General Zia-ul-Haq became a frontline state in the American war against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Islamabad channelled weapons, money, and fighters into a conflict that transformed the tribal belt and normalised the culture of armed militancy. The second was the period after September 2001, when General Pervez Musharraf aligned Pakistan with the American campaign against the Taliban, creating a new set of contradictions and a new generation of enemies within. Khawaja Asif did not deny that these choices bear directly on the crisis Pakistan faces today. He conceded the connection openly.
That admission matters because it breaks from the habit of treating Pakistan purely as a victim of external conspiracies. The minister is acknowledging that policy choices have consequences, that decisions made in Rawalpindi and Islamabad decades ago helped construct the landscape of violence Pakistan now inhabits. This kind of historical reckoning is rare in Pakistani official discourse, and it deserves acknowledgement.
It also deserves scrutiny. Khawaja Asif has a personal dimension to navigate here. His father served as the nominated chairman of the Majlis-e-Shoora and held other senior positions during the Zia era, the very period the minister now publicly criticises. He has, to his credit, acknowledged this uncomfortable inheritance and even offered a public apology for his family’s association with that government. The apology is noted. But an apology for the past does not automatically resolve the policy questions of the present. The real test is not whether a minister can acknowledge historical error. The real test is whether the state is genuinely learning from it.
On that question, the picture is less clear. Pakistan is once again deepening its engagement with Washington at a moment of significant global flux. Khawaja Asif defended this relationship against domestic critics, describing the United States as a critical partner despite what he candidly called a “flirtatious” history of ties that have gone “up and down.” He argued that the common citizen understands the compulsions of engaging with a global superpower. That may be true. Pakistani public opinion is not naive about geopolitical realities. But understanding the compulsions of a relationship is not the same as having confidence in how that relationship is being managed or what it will cost the country in the long run.
This is precisely where candour without clarity becomes insufficient. Pakistan’s relationship with the United States has followed a damaging cycle across several decades. Each phase of deep engagement has been followed by rupture, abandonment, and blowback. The pattern did not begin with Zia or end with Musharraf. It is structural. Acknowledging that history is important. It is, as Khawaja Asif himself has done, an honest beginning. But acknowledgement alone does not constitute policy. If Pakistan is to avoid repeating the same cycle, the recalibration must be debated openly, tested against alternatives, and subjected to parliamentary scrutiny. Reassurances offered in foreign television studios are no substitute for a coherent national conversation about strategic direction.
Pakistan’s western frontier remains a wound that has not closed. The TTP threat is real. The Afghan Taliban’s ambivalence is dangerous. The regional dimensions, including Indian engagement in Kabul, add further complexity. All of this demands serious, sustained strategic thinking rather than reactive posturing. Khawaja Asif’s frankness in Berlin was, on balance, a more honest account of Pakistan’s situation than the country is accustomed to hearing from its officials. The question that follows is whether that honesty will translate into a genuine break with the patterns that created this crisis, or whether it will remain, like so much before it, a candid statement of problems without the will to resolve them.
