Pakistan is playing peacemaker in one war while fighting another

Pakistan blames Afghanistan for a surge in militant attacks since the U.S. withdrawal in 2021, although the Taliban denies that militants are using Afghanistan as a base.

Years of diplomatic efforts to resolve the problem have failed, said Ali Sarwar Naqvi, a former Pakistani diplomat and executive director of the Center for International Strategic Studies, an Islamabad-based think tank.

“There is this false impression that we are waging a war against Afghanistan,” he said, when “it is the Afghans who have allowed terrorist acts to be carried out against Pakistan.”

The conflict threatens to further destabilize a region where terrorist groups such as the Islamic State group and Al Qaeda are trying to remobilize.

As for peace talks with Iran, “the challenge is to ensure that Pakistan’s ambitions do not collapse under the weight of the contradictions of its internal and regional instabilities,” said Chietigj Bajpaee, senior fellow for South Asia at Chatham House, a London-based think tank.

But if Pakistan manages to successfully conduct the negotiations, “that would be a feather in its cap,” he said.

“Its status with the United States, its status in the Islamic world and its status in South Asia would increase,” Bajpaee said.

Pakistan is in a “unique position” to mediate the Iran war because it has good relations with all five permanent members of the UN Security Council – the United States, Britain, China, France and Russia – and is also currently a member of the council itself, Naqvi said.

“Therefore, we should play our legitimate role in trying to bring the fighters together,” he said.

Pakistan’s relations with the United States have improved significantly under Trump, who met twice last year with Pakistan’s powerful army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, and called him his “favorite field marshal.” Pakistan also gained favor by joining Trump’s Peace Council and nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize.

But the war against Iran is very unpopular in Pakistan, which has the second largest population of Shiite Muslims in the world after Iran. When a U.S.-Israeli strike killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader and a central figure in Shiite Islam, demonstrators marched on U.S. diplomatic missions in deadly demonstrations.

There are other potential stumbling blocks in Pakistan’s peace efforts, Bajpaee said.

On the one hand, Pakistan has no formal ties with Israel, which does not appear to be involved in any negotiations between the United States and Iran and has promised to continue its strikes.

And while Pakistan and Iran have strong cultural and religious ties, their relationship is also under strain, said Rajiv Dogra, a former Indian diplomat based in Pakistan, with the two countries trading strikes in 2024 against Baloch separatists operating on both sides of the border.

Dogra also cited Pakistan’s failure to protect its Shiite Muslim minority from targeted attacks by Sunni militants.

“All this is observed in Tehran and noted with discontent,” he added.

In a phone call Saturday with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian praised Pakistan’s peace efforts but stressed “the need to build trust,” according to a Pakistani readout of the call.

Nonetheless, Iran has called Pakistan a friendly nation in recent days and, according to Pakistan, would allow 20 additional Pakistani-flagged ships to transit the Strait of Hormuz after 10 passages last week.

Pakistan has long played a central role in U.S. relations in the region.

In 1971, Henry Kissinger secretly traveled to China via Pakistan ahead of President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to Beijing. Pakistan also helped facilitate the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in the 1980s and the US deal with the Taliban ending their war in Afghanistan during Trump’s first term.

“We have repeatedly carried out this kind of work to establish peace and stability in the region,” Naqvi said. “That’s our goal.”

Mushtaq Yusufzai reported from Peshawar, Pakistan, Mithil Aggarwal from New Delhi and Marin Scott from New York.