our years after the Taliban’s return to power in Kabul, Afghanistan remains in a fragile state of transition, hindered by institutional voids and mounting governance challenges. Among the most urgent is the need to professionalize its security forces. The recent earthquake exposed glaring shortfalls in emergency response, highlighting a deeper crisis: Afghanistan sits on billions of dollars’ worth of advanced Western military equipment but lacks the skills to operate, maintain, or strategically deploy it. Without assistance, this stockpile risks becoming a dangerous liability.
Amid Afghanistan’s diplomatic isolation, Pakistan stands out as the most practical and culturally attuned partner to train and educate a future Afghan army. Pakistan’s established institutions, shared border, and long history of working with Afghan professionals make it uniquely positioned to assume this role, even as its reputation in Western capitals remains complex.
Afghanistan’s Fragile Forces
For a regime once defined by guerrilla tactics, managing a modern security apparatus is an entirely new challenge. A professional military is not merely a symbol of sovereignty but a pillar of stability, necessary for protecting borders, deterring groups like ISIS–Khorasan, and managing internal security. A weak force risks fueling factionalism, insurgency resurgence, and even civil breakdown.
Most of Afghanistan’s technical officers, trained pilots, and logisticians fled after Kabul’s fall. What remains are former insurgents promoted into roles they are unprepared for. Even basic maintenance of helicopters and heavy vehicles requires trained engineers and logisticians who no longer exist in the system. The choice is not whether Afghanistan will have a military. It is between whether Afghanistan’s military will evolve into a professional institution or collapse into a brittle force armed with advanced weapons it cannot control.
Pakistan’s Track Record
Despite political tensions and a complex legacy, Pakistan has built one of the region’s most robust ecosystems for professional training and education. Afghan professionals have long studied at its universities and service academies, forming a steady channel of bilateral engagement.
More importantly, Pakistan’s military institutions, like the Pakistan Military Academy at Kakul and the Command and Staff College in Quetta, offer training grounded in regional terrain, tactics, and command culture. Unlike Western models, which critics described as “the right army in the wrong place,” Pakistan’s pedagogy is compatible with Afghanistan’s operational realities.
Pakistan also brings hard–earned experience in transforming irregular fighters into structured units, developed during its own counterinsurgency campaigns. Its ability to retrain combatants, build disciplined hierarchies, and repurpose assets for humanitarian response makes it uniquely suited to Afghanistan’s needs.
India’s Limitations
By contrast, India (once a major training partner) has been sidelined since the Taliban’s return. Military cooperation remains frozen, and political realities make its resumption unlikely. Geographic distance, strained ties with Pakistan, and limited cultural compatibility further diminish India’s practicality.
The Path Forward
Afghanistan stands at a crossroads. Partnering with Pakistan for military training may raise concerns about ideological influence, but those risks can be managed through oversight and selective engagement. Isolation, by contrast, guarantees failure. Attempting to rebuild a security institution and manage billions of dollars in advanced equipment without professional expertise risks turning the Taliban’s “Grand Army” into a hollow, self–inflicted crisis.
Balancing Engagement and Oversight
Critics may question whether professionalizing Afghanistan’s forces under Pakistan’s guidance risks entrenching Taliban power. This concern is valid: the Taliban maintains de facto control over the military, and any assistance inevitably occurs in that context. Yet, a brittle, untrained force armed with sophisticated equipment is a far greater threat, both to Afghan civilians and regional stability. Strategic engagement, focused on technical training, logistics, and humanitarian capacity, can improve operational competence without legitimizing ideology. This engagement also prioritizes humanitarian response, ensuring that the Afghan population benefits directly from a professionalized force.
Oversight mechanisms, potentially involving multilateral observers, selective cadre training, and clearly defined program goals, can mitigate the risk of inadvertently strengthening the Taliban politically. The aim is not to empower a regime but to prevent collapse that would leave Afghanistan ungovernable and its weapons unsecured. In this light, partnering with Pakistan is a pragmatic choice: it channels Afghan military capability into structured professionalism rather than chaos, providing stability and creating space for incremental institutional reform, even under difficult political circumstances.
Ultimately, careful, technical engagement with Pakistan offers Afghanistan the best chance to professionalize its forces while maintaining oversight. This approach mitigates collapse, channels capability into structured professionalism, and supports long–term stability, without inadvertently reinforcing the Taliban. With Western support withdrawn and India sidelined, Pakistan remains the only viable path to avoid repeating past failures.
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Pakistan is key to Afghanistan’s long–term stability
October 2, 2025
The Taliban’s return to Kabul has been characterized by institutional voids and mounting governance challenges. It has also contributed to a crisis of unpreparedness among Afghanistan’s security forces, but Pakistan could help, writes Asha Castleberry–Hernandez.
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our years after the Taliban’s return to power in Kabul, Afghanistan remains in a fragile state of transition, hindered by institutional voids and mounting governance challenges. Among the most urgent is the need to professionalize its security forces. The recent earthquake exposed glaring shortfalls in emergency response, highlighting a deeper crisis: Afghanistan sits on billions of dollars’ worth of advanced Western military equipment but lacks the skills to operate, maintain, or strategically deploy it. Without assistance, this stockpile risks becoming a dangerous liability.
Amid Afghanistan’s diplomatic isolation, Pakistan stands out as the most practical and culturally attuned partner to train and educate a future Afghan army. Pakistan’s established institutions, shared border, and long history of working with Afghan professionals make it uniquely positioned to assume this role, even as its reputation in Western capitals remains complex.
Afghanistan’s Fragile Forces
For a regime once defined by guerrilla tactics, managing a modern security apparatus is an entirely new challenge. A professional military is not merely a symbol of sovereignty but a pillar of stability, necessary for protecting borders, deterring groups like ISIS–Khorasan, and managing internal security. A weak force risks fueling factionalism, insurgency resurgence, and even civil breakdown.
Most of Afghanistan’s technical officers, trained pilots, and logisticians fled after Kabul’s fall. What remains are former insurgents promoted into roles they are unprepared for. Even basic maintenance of helicopters and heavy vehicles requires trained engineers and logisticians who no longer exist in the system. The choice is not whether Afghanistan will have a military. It is between whether Afghanistan’s military will evolve into a professional institution or collapse into a brittle force armed with advanced weapons it cannot control.
Pakistan’s Track Record
Despite political tensions and a complex legacy, Pakistan has built one of the region’s most robust ecosystems for professional training and education. Afghan professionals have long studied at its universities and service academies, forming a steady channel of bilateral engagement.
More importantly, Pakistan’s military institutions, like the Pakistan Military Academy at Kakul and the Command and Staff College in Quetta, offer training grounded in regional terrain, tactics, and command culture. Unlike Western models, which critics described as “the right army in the wrong place,” Pakistan’s pedagogy is compatible with Afghanistan’s operational realities.
Pakistan also brings hard–earned experience in transforming irregular fighters into structured units, developed during its own counterinsurgency campaigns. Its ability to retrain combatants, build disciplined hierarchies, and repurpose assets for humanitarian response makes it uniquely suited to Afghanistan’s needs.
India’s Limitations
By contrast, India (once a major training partner) has been sidelined since the Taliban’s return. Military cooperation remains frozen, and political realities make its resumption unlikely. Geographic distance, strained ties with Pakistan, and limited cultural compatibility further diminish India’s practicality.
The Path Forward
Afghanistan stands at a crossroads. Partnering with Pakistan for military training may raise concerns about ideological influence, but those risks can be managed through oversight and selective engagement. Isolation, by contrast, guarantees failure. Attempting to rebuild a security institution and manage billions of dollars in advanced equipment without professional expertise risks turning the Taliban’s “Grand Army” into a hollow, self–inflicted crisis.
Balancing Engagement and Oversight
Critics may question whether professionalizing Afghanistan’s forces under Pakistan’s guidance risks entrenching Taliban power. This concern is valid: the Taliban maintains de facto control over the military, and any assistance inevitably occurs in that context. Yet, a brittle, untrained force armed with sophisticated equipment is a far greater threat, both to Afghan civilians and regional stability. Strategic engagement, focused on technical training, logistics, and humanitarian capacity, can improve operational competence without legitimizing ideology. This engagement also prioritizes humanitarian response, ensuring that the Afghan population benefits directly from a professionalized force.
Oversight mechanisms, potentially involving multilateral observers, selective cadre training, and clearly defined program goals, can mitigate the risk of inadvertently strengthening the Taliban politically. The aim is not to empower a regime but to prevent collapse that would leave Afghanistan ungovernable and its weapons unsecured. In this light, partnering with Pakistan is a pragmatic choice: it channels Afghan military capability into structured professionalism rather than chaos, providing stability and creating space for incremental institutional reform, even under difficult political circumstances.
Ultimately, careful, technical engagement with Pakistan offers Afghanistan the best chance to professionalize its forces while maintaining oversight. This approach mitigates collapse, channels capability into structured professionalism, and supports long–term stability, without inadvertently reinforcing the Taliban. With Western support withdrawn and India sidelined, Pakistan remains the only viable path to avoid repeating past failures.
