According to sources, the the meeting of anti-Taliban figures, which was scheduled to take place this week in Islamabad, has been postponed. The delay, according to the same sources, is due to 'visa problems' for the scheduled partecipants. In August 2025, Pakistan had in fact proposed a two-day conference in Islamabad under the title “Towards Unity and Trust,” gathering exiled Afghan politicians, civil society activists, women’s rights defenders, and members of the National Resistance Council. Officially framed as an “academic” initiative, the summit was billed as an exercise in inclusivity and dialogue. In reality, it was a calculated maneuver by the very state most responsible for Afghanistan’s current devastation.

The Taliban quickly condemned the event, seeing it as an attack on their legitimacy. Critics abroad, including Zalmay Khalilzad—the architect of the deeply flawed Doha deal—likened it to Kabul hosting anti-Pakistan militants, warning it would inflame tensions. But the problem is deeper: Pakistan has no moral standing to host such a gathering, because its fingerprints are all over the Afghan tragedy.

For decades, the Pakistani military and its intelligence arm, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), have nurtured and protected the Taliban. Under the doctrine of “strategic depth,” Rawalpindi’s generals built jihadist networks to dominate Afghanistan and weaken Indian influence, all while presenting themselves to the West as indispensable allies in counterterrorism. This duplicity enriched Pakistan with billions in U.S. and NATO aid, even as it provided safe havens for insurgents who were killing NATO soldiers in Afghanistan. The record is damning: Osama bin Laden was discovered in Abbottabad, in the shadow of Pakistan’s premier military academy. Mullah Omar and his commanders regrouped in Quetta, forming the so-called Quetta Shura. Senior Taliban leaders lived openly in Peshawar, their families educated in Pakistani cities, their movements shielded by ISI handlers. The Haqqani Network, one of the deadliest Taliban factions, operated with impunity on Pakistani soil, coordinating suicide attacks that killed thousands.

In 2021, when the Taliban swept back into Kabul, Pakistan’s establishment celebrated. Then–ISI chief Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed personally flew to Kabul to broker the shape of the new government. Pakistani officials openly boasted that Afghans had “broken the shackles of slavery.” The message was unmistakable: the Taliban’s victory was Pakistan’s strategic triumph, the culmination of years of covert patronage.

That triumph has since collapsed into blowback. The Taliban’s refusal to crack down on the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)—a group ideologically aligned with their Afghan cousins—has unleashed waves of cross-border attacks that have killed Pakistani soldiers and civilians alike. In response, Islamabad has ordered airstrikes inside Afghanistan, expelled hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees, imposed sweeping restrictions at the border, and engaged in open hostility with its once-favored clients. The relationship between patron and proxy has soured—but Pakistan’s instinct has remained the same: shift the blame, change the narrative, and repackage duplicity as diplomacy.

The 2025 opposition summit must be understood in this light. It is not a genuine platform for dialogue but a blunt instrument of pressure. It tells the Taliban that Pakistan retains the power to cultivate alternative centers of Afghan legitimacy. It tells foreign capitals that Pakistan is still the key to Afghanistan’s political future. It is leverage, not reconciliation.

And it is theater. The same generals in Rawalpindi who bankrolled extremists for decades now parade Afghan women’s rights defenders for international consumption. The same ISI that sheltered the Taliban’s senior command now pretends to safeguard Afghan democracy. This is not diplomacy—it is sabotage disguised as statesmanship.

The consequences are grave. By treating Afghanistan as a permanent chessboard, Pakistan has prolonged instability, fueled repression, and created generations of refugees. Its duplicity has destabilized not only Afghanistan but also its own security: the TTP is, in many ways, Pakistan’s own monster. The same infrastructure of sanctuaries, training camps, and ideological indoctrination that Pakistan cultivated for the Afghan jihad has now turned inward, threatening Pakistan’s own stability. And yet Islamabad continues to pretend it is the solution to the problem it engineered.

The indictment is straightforward. For forty years, Pakistan has played both sides—arming militants with one hand while demanding money with the other. Every Afghan casualty, every suicide bombing, every refugee camp is part of this ledger of duplicity. Until the international community calls Pakistan what it is—a spoiler state run by generals who prize leverage over stability—the cycle will not end. Islamabad will go on burning the house down and selling itself as the firefighter.