The popular expression ‘pass the buck’ was first used in American poker games, where a player, to avert the burden of dealing, would pass the buck marker (a plastic disc) to another player, making them the dealer. In International Relations, John Mearsheimer’s ‘offensive realism’ discusses how states force a responsibility of preventing a threat to another state by buck-passing, rather than addressing it directly. Likewise, with Pakistan’s decades of pursuit of regional stability and constructive engagement with Afghanistan post-2021, despite the drastic resurgence of spoilers or militants at the Western border, clashes between the proximate neighbors intensified after the Afghan government accused Islamabad of being involved in Kabul’s airstrikes. What followed next was a series of selective inquiries, cross-border aggression, and reactive engagements from Kabul, with New Delhi moving closer to regaining influence near Pakistan’s borders. Debatable denunciation and the ‘passing the buck’ narrative of the Afghan Taliban Administration as to how terrorism in Pakistan is an internal issue, rather than a cross-border manifestation requiring a twofold approach, invited consequential recalibrations from Islamabad. With Pakistan moving forward with a ‘the buck stops here’ posture towards the Taliban Administration after transboundary violence surged post-2021, tangible security concerns and domestic reorientation of Afghan refugees translated into becoming a national matter of urgency. As Pakistan now holds the chairmanship of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure, or SCO-RATS, its efforts to stabilize South Asia and prevent the meltdown of its national security became the center of every international and regional conversation.
With New Delhi’s adventures of crossing the Rubicon of deterrence thresholds and striking down every bilateral effort to control the sponsorship of spoilers in and out of Pakistan, its efforts to seek diplomatic proximity to Kabul leave some stumpers to address. The sociogram of India’s diplomatic maneuvering with Afghanistan can be understood in several frames of reference. From its supplemented aggression towards Pakistan post-Pahalgam to the gamble of its strategic foresight by normalizing ties with an administration facing an international limbo, India has to map out its strategic objectives. This international pressure apropos the recognition of the Afghan government, which is only recognized by the Putin Administration, would leave Modi with a serious burden of command. Any attempt to view the international pressure as an acceptable loss while moving forward with Kabul is neither politically sustainable nor diplomatically wise. Also, with Kabul acting as a geostrategic and security linchpin for India despite international isolation, normalizing ties with the Afghan Administration covers a three-pronged approach. First, historical skepticism compels New Delhi to focus on averting cross-border militancy to stabilize diplomatic operations in Kabul. Second, post-Pahalgam, India places Pakistan on an East-West tightrope, compelling it to rethink its sensitive relations with the Taliban Administration and recalibrate the regional motives of the Modi Government. Third, New Delhi seeks to streamline its trade routes to Kabul via the Chabahar Port, as it serves as an anchor for regional connectivity to Central Asia. It also bypasses Pakistan’s geographical foothold, making it the perfect channel to enhance maritime influence. However, the geometry of trade mapping became interesting with Washington’s revocation of sanction waivers on Tehran’s Chabahar port and with the intensification of India’s dilemma over its $370 million investments. Any alternative route to navigate its relationship with Kabul hints at some strategic and geopolitical complexities; they would be costly, lengthy, and inordinate. Potential alternatives, yet costly and lengthy, would be to use the Vladivostok-Chennai corridor to reach the Caspian Sea via Russia’s Olya Port and join it with Turkmenbashi Port to reach the Mamnazar-Aqina border of Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. Even if India decides to offer economic and diplomatic support to Afghanistan following its aforementioned threefold objectives, it would have to readjust its strategies in accordance with Pakistan’s diplomatic pressure via SCO-RATS. India’s ‘Paradox of Choice’ would eventually overwhelm its strategic architecture with too many options acting all at once. Now, Pakistan’s international posture as a regional frontliner in countering terrorism has not gone unnoticed by the SCO members; it can opt for a more proactive policy in RATS, bridging states together to address transnational threats.
The refugee fallout on the neighboring states sharing geographical proximity to Afghanistan triggered every aspect of national security for the Central Asian and Middle Eastern states. The ‘safe havens’ realization of states countering terrorism actively and historically now faces a situation where the involvement of those spoilers in cross-border smuggling, with support from refugees, has become an issue of regional and national security: a fear of a new wave of militants regrouping. Pakistan via RATS could take Kabul’s neighbors and conduct joint exercises of deporting refugees back to Kabul and stabilize borders to prevent spoilers from corroding peace operations. With the Afghan Taliban administration showing concerns about the mass displacement of refugees from Iran and Pakistan, subscribing to any deal is out of the question, as Islamabad’s & Tehran’s national security and public sentiments demand consequential recalibrations. One out of three major issues between Kabul and Islamabad includes cross-border terrorism, alongside the Durand Line and the refugee crisis. This dangerous triad, despite bilateral maneuverability and trilateral ‘talks’ between Kabul, Beijing, and Islamabad, continues to destabilize the regional chessboard of South Asia. Even if Kabul decides to negotiate on certain matters of transnational security (arms & drug smuggling), its neighboring states would go to extreme lengths to exercise their powers to deport refugees back to their capital. With India continuing to extend its support towards the Afghan Administration on the deported refugees and border confrontations with Pakistan, this co-optation raises a question: how long can New Delhi hold the line?
Transnationalization of security, in global security approaches, helps us understand the complex web of interconnection between cross-border nontraditional and traditional security issues. In security studies, ‘securitization’ is a concept where political or social issues are constituted as security threats by political actors using ‘national security’ to shift issues from low to high priority concerns, requiring social and national action. The collective narrative of a society and political leadership decides how and when to take action on matters of national survival. The threefold approach in national security and foreign policy offers the factor of time, the urgency of choice, and the environment of decision as the collective factors on how to shape security issues. Immigration, refugees, and cross-border militancy are some of the interlinked conundrums Pakistan has been dealing with due to having an unstable Kabul at its borders. The practical demonstration of illegal weapons trafficking, narcotics peddling, and terror financing at the Afghan-Pak border highlights how states have the proclivity to become both a provider of security and a projector of insecurity in internal or external affairs. With both sides agreeing on a ceasefire, with no territorial claims to make, the Afghan Administration will have to ensure its operations against militants operating from its territory. The transnationalization of security issues between Kabul and Islamabad could only be solved if the former addresses them not as ‘internal’ issues, but as a priority in its OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act). This manifestation of ‘negative peace’ in the Pak-Afghan dynamics remains the tipping point where both sides have halted operations, but the sensitivity of the unaddressed conflict and the sequence of decisions to address Islamabad’s concerns demand multiple tangents to be solved with kinetic or non-kinetic options inside Afghanistan. Now, as the dialogue reached a stalemate as a payoff, worst-case scenarios are being mapped out with a risk-preparedness mechanism by Islamabad.
