The Afghan War 2001–Present and Its Impact on Pakistan

The second phase of the Afghan war — the twenty-year US-led intervention from 2001 to 2021 and its aftermath — has been examined in the War on Terror topic from the angle of US-Pakistan relations. This lesson focuses on Afghanistan itself: the political-military trajectory of the country, the 2021 transition, and the cumulative impact of forty-five years of conflict on Pakistan.

The US-led intervention (2001–2014)

Operation Enduring Freedom began on 7 October 2001. By mid-November the Northern Alliance, with US air support, had captured Mazar-e-Sharif; Kabul fell on 13 November; Kandahar in early December. The Taliban regime, in power since 1996, collapsed within ten weeks.

The Bonn Conference of December 2001 established an interim Afghan administration under Hamid Karzai. The political trajectory followed:

The military trajectory was less linear. The Taliban regrouped from 2003 onwards, operating from sanctuaries in the Pakistani tribal areas and increasingly from southern Afghan provinces themselves. The 2006 NATO ISAF expansion to the south brought British, Canadian, Dutch, Danish, Australian and other forces into intense ground combat. The 2009–10 surge under President Obama brought US troop strength to over 100,000.

By 2014, when the ISAF combat mandate ended, the Taliban controlled or contested roughly 20% of Afghan districts. Over the next seven years — through the residual NATO Resolute Support Mission, the 2017 Trump strategy, the 2018–19 Doha negotiations, the February 2020 US-Taliban deal, and the 2021 withdrawal — this share rose to over 50%.

The Doha process and the 2020 agreement

The Doha Agreement of 29 February 2020, signed between the United States and the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, committed the US to a full troop withdrawal by 1 May 2021 (later extended) in exchange for Taliban commitments on counter-terrorism. The agreement was deliberately silent on the future Afghan political settlement, which was left for intra-Afghan negotiations that never produced an agreement.

Pakistan played a significant role in the Doha process:

• Bringing Taliban representatives to the table from 2018
• Facilitating prisoner releases that enabled negotiations
• Hosting subsequent diplomatic engagements
• Coordinating with the Trump administration's special representative Zalmay Khalilzad

The Pakistani diplomatic role was acknowledged by Khalilzad and other US officials at the time. It was, however, contingent on a transition the United States and the Taliban were both committed to — not a Pakistan-driven outcome.

The 2021 collapse

The Biden administration's April 2021 withdrawal announcement accelerated the Taliban offensive. Provincial capitals began falling in early August: Zaranj on 6 August, Sheberghan on 7 August, Kunduz on 8 August, Herat on 13 August, Kandahar on 13 August. Kabul fell on 15 August 2021; President Ghani fled the country the same day.

The pace of collapse surprised even Pakistani planners. The Afghan National Defense and Security Forces — 300,000 strong on paper, with two decades of US training and equipment — disintegrated in two weeks. The Abbey Gate suicide bombing of 26 August 2021 at Kabul airport, conducted by ISIS-K, killed 13 US service members and over 170 Afghan civilians during the chaotic evacuation.

The last US forces departed Kabul on 30 August 2021, ending the twenty-year war.

The post-2021 Taliban regime

The Taliban's second period in power — under Emir Hibatullah Akhundzada and the cabinet announced in September 2021 — has differed from the 1996–2001 regime in scope (now governing the entire country) and in international engagement (limited but not zero), but has continued the earlier regime's emphasis on:

Domain	Post-2021 Taliban policy
Gender	Girls' secondary education banned; women's university access suspended; female employment restricted
Justice	Hanafi-jurisprudence-based, with corporal punishments restored
Media	Restrictive; independent media largely shut down
Foreign relations	No state has formally recognised the regime; limited engagement by China, Russia, Iran, Central Asian states, Pakistan, Qatar
Counter-terrorism	Selective cooperation against ISIS-K; non-cooperation on TTP

The regime has stabilised internal control more effectively than most observers anticipated, but at substantial humanitarian cost. Over 28 million Afghans require humanitarian assistance; the economy has contracted by an estimated 30% since 2021; banking-sector isolation continues.

The impact on Pakistan: four decades of spillover

Cumulating across forty-five years, the Afghan war has had transformative impact on Pakistan along multiple dimensions:

1. Demographic

At peak in the late 1980s, Pakistan hosted over 3.5 million Afghan refugees — the largest single refugee population in the world. As of 2024, the figure stands at approximately 1.4 million registered refugees plus an estimated 700,000 unregistered Afghans, despite the November 2023 Illegal Foreigners' Repatriation Plan that returned several hundred thousand.

2. Economic

Cumulative direct economic costs to Pakistan from the Afghan war spillover — counter-terrorism operations, refugee hosting, infrastructure damage, lost FDI, lost tourism — are estimated at over $200 billion across the 1979–2024 period.

3. Social

The "Kalashnikov culture" and the heroin trade are direct legacies of the Afghan jihad. Pakistan's narcotics-trafficking problem, urban gun violence, and the proliferation of religious-political movements all bear the imprint of the war years.

4. Religious-political

The Afghan jihad produced an expansion of madaris (estimated at over 30,000 nationally by some counts), the strengthening of sectarian and trans-national militant networks, and the conditions in which the TTP and similar groups would later emerge.

5. Strategic

Pakistan's strategic doctrine, civil-military balance, and external alignment have all been shaped by the Afghan war. The "strategic depth" doctrine, the ISI's regional capabilities, the army's counter-insurgency experience, and Pakistan's CPEC alignment with China are all, at root, products of the Afghan-war environment.

6. Political

The Zia regime's longevity, the polarisation between the PPP and PML-N over Afghan policy, the rise of religious-political parties (JUI, JI), and the contemporary TTP question all trace some part of their origin to the Afghan-war period.

The Afghan war reshaped Pakistan more profoundly than any event since the loss of East Pakistan in 1971. It transformed the army, the intelligence services, the economy, the religious landscape, and the political balance — and continues, four decades on, to set the terms of Pakistani national life.

The contemporary challenge

The post-2021 phase has produced specific challenges:

• TTP sanctuary: the Afghan Taliban have not delivered on commitments regarding the TTP, producing renewed Pakistani counter-terrorism operations and diplomatic friction
• Refugee return: the 2023 IFRP has been politically controversial and humanitarianly difficult
• Border management: completed fencing on the Afghan border, but continued cross-border incidents
• Trade and transit: tensions at Torkham and Chaman; sustained reduction in Afghan-Pakistan trade since 2017
• Diplomatic positioning: Pakistan urges international engagement with the Taliban while not formally recognising the regime

The Afghan war — in its political form — has continued for over four decades. Its spillover into Pakistan is unlikely to be resolved in less than a generation. The country's task, in the coming decade, is to manage rather than resolve a relationship whose terms are set in Kabul.

Try Yourself

Quiz: The War in Afghanistan Since 1979