After three days, talks between Pakistan and Afghanistan in Istanbul, aimed at ending a tense and violent standoff between the South Asian neighbours, appeared to have hit a wall in Istanbul on Tuesday.
Mediated by Qatar and Türkiye, the negotiations followed an initial round of dialogue in Doha, which produced a temporary ceasefire on October 19 after a week of fighting that left dozens dead on both sides, reports Reuters and Al Jazeera.
Talks aimed at securing a long-term truce between Afghanistan and Pakistan concluded in Istanbul without a “workable solution”, Pakistan’s information minister said on Wednesday, in a blow for peace in the region after deadly clashes this month.
The talks were aimed at reaching lasting peace between the South Asian neighbours after dozens were killed along their border in the worst such violence since the Taliban took power in Kabul in 2021.
“The Afghan side kept deviating from the core issue, evading the key point upon which the dialogue process was initiated,” Pakistan Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said in a statement early on Wednesday.
“Instead of accepting any responsibility, the Afghan Taliban resorted to blame game, deflection and ruses. The dialogue thus failed to bring about any workable solution,” Tarar said.
Afghanistan’s foreign and defence ministries did not immediately respond to requests from Reuters for comment on Tarar’s statement.
Both nations agreed to a ceasefire brokered in Doha on October 19, but could not find common ground in a second round of talks mediated by Turkey and Qatar in Istanbul, Afghan and Pakistani sources briefed on the issue told Reuters on Tuesday, with each blaming the other for the failure.
But even though officials and experts said that “last-ditch” efforts were expected to continue to try to pull the two countries back from a full-fledged conflict, the prospects of new hostilities between them loom large after their inability, so far, to build on the Doha truce, analysts say.
Pakistani security officials said that on Monday, talks went on for nearly 18 hours. But they accused the Afghan delegation of changing its position on Islamabad’s central demand – that Kabul crack down on the Pakistan Taliban armed group, known by the acronym TTP. One official, speaking to Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the dialogue, alleged that the “instructions received from Kabul” for the Afghan team were complicating negotiations.
Kabul, however, blamed the Pakistani delegation for a “lack of coordination,” claiming the Pakistani side was “not presenting clear arguments” and kept “leaving the negotiating table”, Afghan media reported.
The Afghan team is being led by the deputy minister for administrative affairs at the Ministry of Interior, Haji Najib, while Pakistan has not publicly disclosed its representatives.
Recent cross-border attacks between the militaries of the two countries have killed multiple people, troops and civilians, and injured many more in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.
United States President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly sought credit for resolving global conflicts, also waded in, saying he would “solve the Afghanistan-Pakistan crisis very quickly”, while speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Nations (ASEAN) summit in Malaysia earlier in the week.
Yet, any long-term settlement appears difficult due to the two nations’ “profound mutual distrust and conflicting priorities”, said Baqir Sajjad Syed, a former Pakistan fellow at the Wilson Center and a journalist who covers national security.
Syed added that their historical grievances and Pakistan’s past interventions in Afghanistan make concessions politically risky for the Afghan Taliban.
“In my view, the core issue is ideological alignment. The Afghan Taliban’s dependence on TTP for dealing with internal security problems [inside Afghanistan] makes it difficult for them to dissociate from the group, despite Pakistani concerns,” he told Al Jazeera.
A fraught friendship
Historically, Pakistan was long perceived as the primary patron of the Afghan Taliban. Many in Pakistan publicly welcomed the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021 after the withdrawal of US forces.
But relations have sharply deteriorated since, largely over the TTP, an armed group that emerged in 2007 during the US-led so-called “war on terror”, and which has waged a long campaign against Islamabad.
A Pakistani security source said the Taliban had been unwilling to commit to rein in the Pakistani Taliban, a separate militant group hostile to Pakistan that Islamabad says operates with impunity inside Afghanistan.
An Afghan source familiar with the talks said they had ended after “tense exchanges” over the issue, adding that the Afghan side said it no control over the Pakistani Taliban, which has launched attacks against Pakistani troops in recent weeks.
The sources sought anonymity as they were not authorised to speak publicly.
The October clashes began after Pakistani air strikes this month on Kabul, the Afghan capital, among other locations, targeting the head of the Pakistani Taliban.
The Taliban responded with attacks on Pakistani military posts along the length of the 2,600-km (1,600 miles) border.
On Saturday, Pakistan’s defence minister said he believed Afghanistan wanted peace but that failure to reach an agreement in Istanbul would mean “open war”.
Despite a ceasefire between Pakistan and the Taliban, weekend clashes killed five Pakistani soldiers and 25 Pakistani Taliban militants near the border with Afghanistan, the military said on Sunday.
