Originally published by Atalyar. Featured by South Asia Times (SAT) for informational purposes, with attribution to the original author and publisher.
The immediate disagreement was between Pakistan and the Taliban authorities. Russia’s special representative for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, said the two delegations could not agree on language referring to Afghanistan in the context of terrorism. Kabul objected that Afghanistan was being associated too heavily with militant activity, while Pakistan insisted that terrorism remained the central unresolved security issue.
The significance lies not simply in another Pakistan-Taliban disagreement, but in where it surfaced. The Moscow Format was designed to coordinate regional positions on Afghanistan. This time, terrorism itself prevented that consensus.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov praised the Taliban authorities’ record since returning to power and welcomed their security performance. Moscow has particular reason to value Taliban operations against Islamic State-Khorasan, which has threatened Russia and raised serious concerns across Central Asia.
Pakistan is looking at the same security landscape from a very different direction.
Islamabad argues that Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and other militant organizations continue to operate from Afghan territory. Pakistan’s special representative Mohammad Sadiq told the meeting that terrorism emanating from Afghanistan had caused thousands of Pakistani deaths in recent years.
The emerging disagreement is therefore not over whether terrorism exists in Afghanistan, but over which threats count most.
A dangerous form of selective counterterrorism
For Russia and several Central Asian states, ISIS-K remains the most immediate transnational militant threat. Taliban pressure on the organization therefore strengthens Moscow’s view that Kabul can function as a security partner.
Russia’s position does not necessarily mean that Moscow considers every aspect of Taliban counterterrorism successful. It reflects a hierarchy of threats.
Moscow judges Kabul largely by whether it can suppress organizations capable of destabilizing Central Asia or attacking Russia. Pakistan judges the same government primarily by whether it restrains TTP and other groups conducting or facilitating attacks across its western border.
The Moscow disagreement revealed what happens when those threat hierarchies no longer overlap.
United Nations monitoring has continued to identify more than 20 regional and international militant organizations with a presence in Afghanistan, including TTP, al-Qaeda-linked networks and Central Asian militant groups.
The key question is whether the region is applying a consistent standard to all of them.
If ISIS-K activity threatening Russia and Central Asia is treated as a collective regional security problem, while TTP activity threatening Pakistan is increasingly framed as a bilateral dispute between Islamabad and Kabul, two different standards of counterterrorism emerge.
That distinction is strategically dangerous.
TTP and ISIS-K are distinct organizations and have often been rivals. But militant ecosystems across Afghanistan and Pakistan are not neatly compartmentalized. Fighters defect, factions’ splinter, recruitment networks overlap and alliances evolve.
The lesson is not that TTP and ISIS-K are interchangeable. They are not. It is that pressure on one militant organization does not automatically neutralize the wider environment from which other armed groups continue to operate.
There is also a political consequence.
As Russia deepens engagement with the Taliban, a competing regional narrative is taking shape: Afghanistan as a stabilizing success rather than a continuing source of transnational militancy. Those risks pushing Pakistani concerns over cross-border violence to the margins of regional diplomacy.
Pakistan should not answer this by turning the issue into a confrontation with Moscow. Russia remains an important regional actor and has already offered to assist in reducing Pakistan-Afghanistan tensions.
Islamabad’s stronger argument is broader: a militant sanctuary should not become tolerable merely because its victims live in another country.
Pakistan needs a broader regional case
Pakistan now needs to internationalize that principle rather than relying mainly on repeated official accusations against Kabul.
It should broaden the evidentiary base of its case. Testimony from communities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan affected by militant violence, backed by independent research into recruitment networks, financing, training infrastructure and cross-border attacks, could carry greater international credibility than official statements alone.
The objective should not be to mobilize an anti-Russian campaign. That would be diplomatically counterproductive.
Instead, Pakistan should make a wider regional argument: selective counterterrorism eventually undermines everyone’s security.
Islamabad should also work diplomatically with Russia, China, Iran and the Central Asian republics toward one basic principle: Afghan territory should not provide operational space to armed groups targeting any neighboring state.
That would help Pakistan avoid being cast as the region’s lone dissenter on Afghanistan.
Iran has already offered to facilitate de-escalation between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Central Asian governments continue to have their own concerns about militant organizations linked to their countries, even as their immediate attention remains focused on ISIS-K.
The failed Moscow communique should therefore not be dismissed as another episode in deteriorating Pakistan-Taliban relations.
It reveals something larger: the regional consensus on Afghanistan is beginning to fracture because states are increasingly judging counterterrorism according to which militants threaten them most directly.
Russia is entitled to welcome Taliban successes against ISIS-K.
But suppressing one militant threat while overlooking another is not a durable security architecture.
It is selective security and selective security rarely remains selective for long.
Saima Afzal is a researcher specializing in South Asian security, counterterrorism, and broader geopolitical dynamics across the Middle East, Afghanistan, and the Indo-Pacific. Her work examines strategic affairs and evolving patterns of regional conflict. She is currently a Research Scholar at Justus Liebig University, Germany.
Saima Afzal
Saima Afzal is a researcher specializing in South Asian security, counterterrorism, and broader geopolitical dynamics across the Middle East, Afghanistan, and the Indo-Pacific. Her work examines strategic affairs and evolving patterns of regional conflict. She is currently a Research Scholar at Justus Liebig University, Germany.
