Point of dispute: SCO has offered Pakistan and Afghanistan a platform for dialogue

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is ready to provide a platform for mediation between Pakistan and Afghanistan, SCO Secretary General Nurlan Yermekbayev told Izvestia. However, the organization has not yet received any official requests from Islamabad and Kabul. Despite a brief pause in hostilities from March 19 to March 23, the parties failed to normalize relations. According to experts, the key contradictions between the neighbors will persist for a long time. At the same time, Islamabad will not be able to completely solve the problem of militants by force without a ground operation, although such a scenario has already been ruled out there.

The SCO is ready to get involved in the conflict settlement

The last attempt to reduce tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan was made in mid-March. According to an agreement reached through the mediation of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, the parties suspended hostilities in connection with the Eid al-Fitr holiday (Eid al-Adha) and the end of Ramadan from March 19 to March 23 inclusive.

However, this pause did not lead to the launch of a full-fledged negotiation process and did not resolve the key contradictions between Islamabad and Kabul. After the expiration of the truce, the Afghan media reported the resumption of hostilities. According to Amu TV, on the night of March 24, after the Pakistani shelling in Zabul, there was a clash between the Taliban and Pakistani border guards.

In these circumstances, not only Arab countries, but also international structures, including the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, offer their mediation role.

— If the interested parties consider it appropriate to use the organization's mechanisms, the Member States are ready to consider such an opportunity to facilitate de-escalation. The main condition remains the political will of the parties themselves and their real interest in a constructive negotiation process," SCO Secretary General Nurlan Yermekbayev told Izvestia.

According to him, the organization is closely monitoring developments. At the same time, there have been no official requests from Islamabad or Kabul to provide an SCO platform for mediation or negotiations, he said.

"At the same time, the SCO has traditionally been seen as an important regional platform for discussing security issues, including those related to Afghanistan," Nurlan Yermekbayev added.

Voltage regulator: Russia is ready to resolve the conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan

Moscow can become a mediator in the negotiations between Kabul and Islamabad, but only if both sides request it.

The SCO unites 10 states: Belarus, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Afghanistan has long had observer status with the SCO: it was granted to Kabul in 2012, and cooperation with the organization was conducted, among other things, through the SCO–Afghanistan contact group. But after the Taliban came to power in 2021, Kabul's participation in the organization's work was, in fact, frozen.

At the same time, the current acute phase of the conflict between the two countries has been going on since February 22, when Pakistan launched strikes on the territory of Afghanistan, stating that the target was the camps of the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP, listed as terrorists and extremists) and the Islamic State of Khorasan (recognized as terrorist and banned in Russia Russian Federation). Islamabad called it a response to a series of terrorist attacks on its territory, including an explosion at a mosque in the capital. Kabul, in turn, regarded the actions of its neighbors as a gross violation of sovereignty, reporting civilian casualties.

The raid on Kabul on March 17 became a new peak of tension. The Afghan authorities blamed the Pakistani air force for the attack on the drug rehabilitation center, which, according to various sources, killed and injured hundreds of people. Islamabad denied these accusations, saying that the target was the Phoenix military camp, where suicide bombers were trained and drones were stored. It was after this incident that a temporary "regime of silence" was declared.

There was hope that the five days of the truce would be used by the parties to at least agree on something, said Gleb Makarevich, a junior researcher at the Center for the Indian Ocean Region of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Nevertheless, the conflict, according to him, will continue for a very long time, since its root causes have not been resolved.

Will the parties be able to reach an agreement

Attempts by external intermediaries to stop the confrontation have been made before, but have had only a temporary effect. In the fall of 2025, in Doha and Istanbul, with the support of Qatar and Turkey, the parties agreed on a cease-fire and even established a monitoring mechanism. However, it was not possible to reach a long-term political solution due to disagreements on the issue of groups operating against Pakistan from the territory of Afghanistan.

Today, the crisis is tied up in two unsolvable knots. The first is the activity of the TPP. Islamabad is confident that the leadership and militants of the organization use Afghanistan as a safe rear. The second node is the border dispute over the Durand Line, which Kabul has historically not recognized as an official border, whereas for Pakistan, control over this border is a matter of national security.

The confrontation with the TPP has been going on since 2007. During this time, the group has carried out hundreds of attacks on military and civilian targets. After a large-scale army operation in Pakistan in 2016, the activity of the radicals decreased, but in recent years the militants have gone on the offensive again. As a result, Islamabad reduces the entire negotiating agenda to one thing: Kabul must eliminate the TPP bases. Afghanistan insists on stopping strikes on its territory, saying it does not support anti-Pakistan groups. The only question is whether Kabul is really ready or able to contain these structures.

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At the same time, Pakistan, judging by the official rhetoric, has no plans to move to the ground phase of the conflict. The country's ambassador to the Russian Federation, Faisal Niyaz Tirmizi, earlier confirmed to Izvestia that the option of an onshore operation was not being considered. According to Gleb Makarevich, this limits Islamabad's capabilities: it is almost impossible to solve the TPP problem without clearing the territory "on the ground."

"A compromise is only possible if we agree at a high level not to shoot, and if the shootings continue — and they are likely to continue — do not pay too much attention to this if we are talking about minimal losses," Makarevich said.

At the same time, according to the expert, even new strikes on TPP positions are unlikely to allow Pakistan to solve the problem militarily. In a protracted guerrilla war, military operations can cause damage to militants, but they do not eliminate the base of radicalism itself and do not block the influx of new supporters into such groups. Therefore, the current escalation will most likely not be the last, and any new pauses, like the previous ones, will remain only a temporary respite.

For Russia and the entire region, escalation risks turning Afghanistan into an inexhaustible source of cross-border threats. Afghan drug trafficking is traditionally considered one of the main security challenges for both Central Asia and the Russian Federation. The SCO also emphasizes that the stability of the member states directly depends on the situation in Kabul, primarily in the context of the fight against terrorism, extremism and drug trafficking.

Meanwhile, the crisis has already led to severe humanitarian consequences: according to Reuters, by early March, fighting in the border area had forced more than 115,000 Afghan residents and about 3,000 Pakistanis to leave their homes, and UNICEF is warning of the rapid development of a large-scale multi-level crisis.

According to confirmed UN data, at least 219 civilians were killed in Afghanistan during the latest escalation, which began in February. Kabul confirmed the deaths of 13 soldiers, although the Pakistani side claims that several hundred armed Taliban were killed. Islamabad has acknowledged the loss of 12 of its troops.