A ceasefire between Afghanistan’s Taliban regime and Pakistan, agreed after intense clashes last month, is hanging by a diplomatic thread, following a wave of suicide bombings in Pakistan and disputed claims that it retaliated with cross-border drone strikes on Tuesday.
With both countries vowing vengeance, analysts say regional states acting as mediators – Qatar and Turkey, and Iran and Russia – have only a narrow window of opportunity to prevent another round of hostilities.
Otherwise, tensions between the South Asian neighbours could degenerate into prolonged proxy warfare, creating space for transnational terrorist groups based there, particularly the Islamic State-Khorasan (Isis-K), to regenerate and plot overseas attacks.
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According to Omar Samad, a former Afghan ambassador to Canada and France, the “dangerous cat-and-mouse game” between Islamabad and Kabul has entered “the advanced retaliation stage”. Tensions could easily escalate before mediators had time to react or intervene, he told This Week in Asia.
On the other hand, either or both Islamabad and Kabul could be “using the new escalation to prod and enable mediation”, said Samad, currently a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank.
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