ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — After five days of on-and-off talks in Istanbul to resolve hostilities that flared in the first half of October, Pakistan and Afghanistan agreed to continue a ceasefire they arrived at earlier this month, Turkey's Foreign Ministry announced Thursday.
In a statement, the ministry said the next round of talks would take place on Nov. 6: "All parties have agreed to put in place a monitoring and verification mechanism that will ensure maintenance of peace and imposing penalty on the violating party."
The ceasefire came after more than a week of cross-border gunfire and targeted strikes inside Afghanistan killed dozens on both sides, including civilians. The agreement put a pause on the most intense fighting between the two countries in years.
Trade between Pakistan and Afghanistan has ground to a halt as major border crossings remain closed. Analysts warn that the conflict, which has deep roots, could reignite and destabilize the region. Here's what to know.
What's at stake?
The main issue between the neighboring countries is rising militancy in Pakistan's mountainous borderlands, where the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, also known as the Pakistani Taliban, has ramped up attacks in the years since the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 2021, following the withdrawal of U.S. forces. The TTP is closely aligned with the Afghan Taliban, and Pakistan accuses Afghanistan's Taliban rulers of providing them a base and failing to rein them in when they orchestrate deadly attacks in Pakistan — all of which Afghanistan's Taliban denies.
Each country blamed the other for a breakdown in talks earlier this week. In a post on X, Pakistan's Information Minister Ataullah Tarar said Afghanistan's Taliban "have always remained indifferent to Pakistan's losses. ... Pakistan's patience has run its course." Afghan state broadcaster RTA accused Pakistan of "irrational demands."
Pakistan's increasingly bold military actions inside Afghanistan reflect its hardening stance toward cross-border militant groups, says Muhammad Amir Rana, director of Islamabad's Pak Institute for Peace Studies, an independent think tank. "This is signaling to the [Afghan] Taliban that if you haven't changed your attitudes or policies supporting the TTP and other terrorist organizations inside Pakistan, Pakistan can retaliate," he says.
What sparked this month's fighting?
The conflict began after TTP militants ambushed a Pakistani army convoy on Oct. 8, killing 11 soldiers near the Afghan border. The TTP aims to overthrow the Pakistani government and impose hardline Islamic rule, as the Taliban did in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan then blamed Pakistan for multiple strikes inside its territory on Oct. 9, including in its capital, Kabul. Pakistan has neither officially confirmed nor denied carrying out the strikes. Two nights later, Afghan forces fired at Pakistan's border posts in retaliation, leading to back-and-forth gunfire along the border. Cross-border fighting flared up again days later, before both sides agreed to an initial truce, which was later extended in Doha, Qatar, on Oct. 19.
Before ceasefire talks began in Doha, Pakistan also launched what security officials called targeted strikes against militants in Afghanistan's eastern province of Paktika.
Up to now, talks with the Taliban about the TTP have yielded little for Pakistan, analysts say. "Pakistani attempts to talk to the Taliban to convince them to do something against the TTP have failed," says Abdul Basit, senior associate fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.
Islamabad has also tried to pressure the Taliban by deporting Afghan refugees.
Who are the Pakistani Taliban?
The TTP emerged in 2007 in response to Pakistan's military support of the U.S. fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan. It has primarily targeted Pakistani security personnel in recent years, but also has claimed responsibility for horrific attacks on civilians, including one in 2014 that killed more than 100 Pakistani schoolchildren. Its fighters share close ideological ties and battlefield experience with Afghanistan's Taliban.
The group has seen a revival in the past four years, after counterterrorism campaigns significantly weakened it around a decade ago. An independent conflict monitor found the TTP was behind 600 attacks against Pakistani security forces in the past year alone. That's compared to an estimated 67 attacks the year before the Taliban took power in Afghanistan, according to the Pak Institute for Peace Studies.
Pakistan has been closely connected to the Taliban since it cultivated the Afghan group in the 1990s. It was accused of covertly supporting the Taliban through the U.S. war in Afghanistan, something Islamabad denies.
How might this play out?
President Trump said earlier this week on the sidelines of a regional summit in Malaysia that the conflict would be an easy fix. "I heard that Pakistan and Afghanistan have started up, but I'll get that solved very quickly," he said.
In a post on X, Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said Thursday that Afghanistan, "like other neighboring countries, also desires positive relations with Pakistan and it adheres to the principles of mutual respect, non-interference in internal affairs, and not posing a threat to anyone."
Earlier this year, Pakistan and Afghanistan held a trilateral meeting with China to discuss issues including counterterrorism and trade, raising hopes of better relations. But ties are meanwhile growing between Afghanistan and India, Pakistan's eastern neighbor and rival.
Asif, Pakistan's defense minister, said this week that "Kabul is a tool for Delhi." This month's Pakistan-Afghanistan fighting coincided with the Taliban foreign minister's first official visit to India.
"It's not for a lack of diplomacy or dialogue that we are where we are right now," says Asfandyar Mir, senior fellow for South Asia at the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C. The current ceasefire, he says, suggests that for now, Pakistan has been able to corner the Taliban with its military escalation. But he expects the Taliban to continue tacitly supporting the TTP by stalling on Pakistani requests to act against the group in Afghanistan.
He says the Afghan Taliban's support for the TTP is a continued source of regional instability that could lead to more attacks by the group in Pakistan and more intense military action by Pakistan inside Afghanistan.
Basit, from Singapore's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, puts it starkly: "Border tensions will play out at a new level," he warns. "If they were simmering, now they will be boiling."
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