Karma on the Durand Line: Pakistan’s reckoning in Afghanistan and beyond
- Rishi Suri
- 5 days ago
- 4 min read
The latest escalation, Taliban forces seizing Pakistani outposts along the Durand Line may look like a sudden rupture, but in truth it is the culmination of decades of distortion and decay. What we are seeing is not just cross-border skirmish, but a broader unraveling: a nation that long empowered extremism abroad now faces its consequences at home, and from multiple directions.

The Poisonous Legacy of Pakistan’s Deep State
From its earliest days, Pakistan’s military establishment treated Islamist militancy as a strategic commodity. Under U.S. patronage during the Afghan war, Pakistan built and maintained an ecosystem of proxy militias, madrassas, and jihadi networks, believing they would always be controllable. Once the Soviets withdrew and U.S. interest waned, Islamabad simply pivoted that same machinery inward, directing it against Kashmir, India, and domestic dissent. The result was a slow but steady internal disintegration.
Through these decades, the “deep state” cloaked its ambitions behind the cover of strategic depth and regional power. Meanwhile, the Pakistani polity hollowed out: civil institutions weakened, dissent was crushed, and a culture of impunity flourished. It is no surprise that today, the monster planted abroad has returned home.
The Afghan Reversal: From Puppet to Predator
To understand the current border clashes, one must recall that Afghanistan has been dubbed the Graveyard of Civilizations for a reason. Empires have fallen on Afghan soil for centuries. The lands of the Hindu Kush do not allow puppetry; they demand sovereignty. The Afghan people, in their guts and blood, have endured invasion after invasion, and refused subjugation.
Pakistan treated Afghanistan as a satellite, meddling in every internal battle, sponsoring factions in Kabul, and believing it could dictate outcomes. But the Taliban, hardened by decades of struggle and steeped in tribal ethos, never accepted subservience. Once they re-established power in 2021, the balance of dependence began to invert. The same fighters who once drew lifelines from Rawalpindi now strike across the border, naming Pakistan a trespasser.
The result: when Taliban forces attacked Pakistani posts, it was no mere border raid. It was poetic justice, manifest. It underlines the fact that a patron can become a target when the network it nurtured acquires autonomy.
The TTP Uprising: The Hydra Returns
If Pakistan’s external misadventures were its original sin, its tolerance for internal insurgency is the final reckoning. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has risen again with vigor, emboldened by sanctuary in Afghanistan and the collapse of Pakistani credibility in the region.
Once dismissed as a fringe insurgency, the TTP is now a full-blown challenge to state control. In 2025 alone, it has claimed hundreds of attacks on security forces and civilians alike. The link between the Afghan Taliban and TTP has complicated Islamabad’s posture, Pakistan accuses Kabul of sheltering TTP cadres, while the Taliban insist they cannot (or will not) rein them in.
In border districts like Orakzai and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistani paramilitary and army units have sustained repeated ambushes and bombings attributed to the TTP. The insurgency is no longer confined to tribal margins, it is swelling into a full-blown internal crisis, exposing the central state’s impotence.
So, Pakistan fights a two-front war: one with its former protégés in Kabul, and another with militants within its own territory. In many ways, the TTP embodied the ultimate backlash: the vacuum Pakistan created is now spilling back inwards.
PoJK in Revolt: The Crack in Pakistan’s Kashmir Dominion
As the military is fighting shadows on the borders, a third front has opened in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (PoJK). Mass protests have roiled Muzaffarabad, Mirpur, Bhimber and elsewhere, led by groups such as the Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee (JKJAAC), demanding rights, better governance, and an end to structural neglect.
What began as strikes and shutdowns soon escalated. Security forces unleashed tear gas, batons, and live fire. At least 21 people have died in recent clashes, including civilians and police. Tens of thousands have observed “wheel-jam” and shutter-down protests, paralyzing life across the region.
The protests are more than a local revolt, they signal the fracture of legitimacy in a region long held under military sway. Islamabad’s response has been typically heavy handed: cutting communications, sealing access, deploying troops. The fact that such unrest has grown to this scale within its Kashmir territory indicates that the state’s control is unravelling from within.
The Sum of Reckoning: Karma, Collapse, and Redemption
What we are witnessing is not a crisis but a reckoning, a confluence of consequences that Pakistan’s establishment sowed decades ago. The border clash with the Taliban, the TTP’s resurgence, and the PoJK protests are facets of the same rupture.
Every bullet fired by the Taliban at Pakistani posts is an echo of Pakistan’s own history of sponsoring violence. Every insurgent footprint inside Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is a comeback of the networks Pakistan cultivated. Every cry in PoJK is the voice of the region Pakistan tried to suppress.
This is karma in the most visceral sense. Pakistan used terror as statecraft. Now the state is being consumed by terror. A failing economy, rampant corruption, hollow institutions, suppression of dissent, these were always unsustainable. The deep state chased strategic illusions while killing its own foundations.
But let us not forget: in Afghanistan lies a paradox of hope. The Afghan people, crushed by war, famine, ideological strife, have nonetheless persisted. The notion of the “Graveyard of Civilisations” is not because Afghanistan is cursed, but because every invader who arrived armed with hubris found ruin instead. In the same way, Pakistan’s arrogance in treating Afghanistan as a backyard is meeting its comeuppance.
The Taliban, for better or worse, have shown durability. Their ability to endure, through decades of war, internal schisms, and external pressure, is a lesson in guerrilla perseverance. Their capacity to survive and reclaim terrain is indisputable.
And the people of PoJK, too, risking their lives, clashing with live fire and barbed repression, are asserting dignity. They remind us that oppression cannot be contained forever.
Pakistan now faces a moral inflection point. It can double down on militarism and denial, or it can confront its own legacy: disarm the proxies, strengthen institutions, restore civil space, and accept accountability.
The smoke rising from the Durand Line is more than battlefield dust. It is the haze of a nation in decay, a state haunted by its own creations. The question now is: will it falter completely, or will it awaken before collapse?
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