Wars are fought for pre defined objective. War continue based on strategic reasons. The stated reason for the U.S. presence in Afghanistan after 2001 was al-Qaeda. But the prolongation of U.S. troops in Afghanistan was nuclear. Washington feared what a hostile regime in Kabul might do if it ever got its hands on radioactive material. That fear was not theoretical. It shaped two decades of policy. It is worth remembering now, because it explains both why the US stayed so long and why it cannot simply walk away from the region today.
The evidence for this fear is public record. Within weeks of the October 2001 invasion, US officials told CNN that a hand-drawn dirty-bomb diagram had been found in a Taliban or al-Qaeda facility. NPR reported the same month that Osama bin Laden’s network was actively trying to build a radiological device. According to experts, a dirty bomb does not require a warhead. It requires stolen medical or industrial isotopes wrapped around conventional explosives which has potential to wreak havoc in the city. That threat was cheap, crude, and plausible. It was also exactly the kind of threat posed by Al-Qaeda hosted by Taliben.
This is the logic that kept American and ISAF troops in Afghanistan and then Iraq fearing Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), long after the Taliban’s regime fell apat. Some analysts falsely believed that an Afghanistan left to militant control, sitting next to a nuclear-armed Pakistan, was a proliferation risk the world could not absorb.Although US President Barrack Obama himself admitted Pakistan was a responsible state and there was no fear of proliferation. Analysts continued to flag this danger for years. Arms control specialists warned in 2021 that even without nuclear weapons, a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan raised the risk of radioactive material reaching militants less invested in the country’s stability than the Taliban itself. By 2024, members of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee were publicly alleging that Taliban-backed delegates had traveled to seek nuclear assistance from North Korea. The concern of the acquisition of nuclear technology by the Taliban that began in 2001 never died down. Then, in August 2021, the US forces withdrew anyway without strategising a planned exit which could prevent rehappening of the same. This can be said that US was stuck in Afghanistan and Iraq whereas China was throving in economy and technology. The strategic calculus of the US shifted and China emerged as the top threat for Pentagone.
Four years on, the Taliban still cannot govern the territory they took control of as they are using the same failed approach to radicalise whole society.
Four years on, the Taliban still cannot govern the territory they took control of as they are using the same failed appraoch to radicalise whole society. They imposed their own strict version of Sharia law on Afghan society, particularly on women and girls, while struggling to deliver basic necssities of life even within their own land. The problem with such terrorist affiliate regimes is that when they fail on governance, they sponsor terrorism to neighbouring countires. That failure of governance allowed its territory to become a launching pad again, this time for the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. The ultimate objective is to sponsor TTP , inspire youth for recruitment and attack against Pakistan. The numbers tell the story starkly. Pakistan topped the Global Terrorism Index for the first time in 2026, with terrorism deaths rising to 1,139 in 2025, the highest toll since 2013. The TTP alone was tied to 637 of those deaths and a 24 percent rise in attacks, a surge the index explicitly linked to the Afghan Taliban's return to power. July 2026 was worse still: 112 Pakistani security personnel were killed in a single month, the deadliest month of the year.
Pakistan is not a bystander asking for charity. It is a country that has already paid numerous sacrifices in war against terrorism. Government figures cited by the Express Tribune put Pakistan’s war-on-terror death toll above fifty thousand civilians since 2003, alongside roughly six thousand security personnel, more than double the number of American soldiers lost in Afghanistan over the same conflict. Independent monitoring groups confirm the same order of magnitude. Pakistan’s role in assisting US in Afghanistan was pivotal. Pakistan hosted supply lines for ISAF troops stationed in Afghanistan, absorbed millions of refugees, and fought militant networks on its own soil at a cost few allies have matched.
That history creates an obligation. Fortunately, the mechanism to act on it already exists. Washington and Islamabad have now held four rounds of the US-Pakistan Counterterrorism Dialogue, most recently in Washington this August,2026. The joint statement names the threat plainly: ISIS-Khorasan, al-Qaeda, the TTP, and the Balochistan Liberation Army, all groups that use Afghan or Afghan-adjacent territory to strike a neighboring state. This dialogue is not a symbolic gesture. It is comprehesive in nature and encompasses multiple areas of jointness. It gives both governments a standing forum to coordinate border security, intelligence sharing, and financial disruption without starting from zero.
The stated reason for the U.S. presence in Afghanistan after 2001 was al-Qaeda. But the prolongation of U.S. troops in Afghanistan was nuclear. Washington feared what a hostile regime in Kabul might do if it ever got its hands on radioactive material.
The TTP now kills Pakistani soldiers and civilians from Afghan soil at a pace unseen in over a decade, and Islamabad has consistently called on Kabul to act against such elements and even provided dossier that contains undenaible evidences. On the other hand Taliban regime keep denying any connections to TTP. That denial led Pakistan to take punitive measures against TTP hideouts in Afghanistan. Pakistan-US CT dialogue provides basis to take measures against terrorist organizations impacting Pakistan and US interests in the region.
Pakistan expects US to expedite facilitation and support in counterterrorism. A dialogue that reconvenes once a year cannot keep pace with a militant group whose attacks rose by nearly a quarter in a single year. The US does not need to return combat forces to the region. It needs to treat Pakistan’s counterterrorism fight as a shared strategic interest rather than a regional nuisance, matching the diplomatic language of the joint statements with sustained intelligence cooperation, border security assistance, and consistent pressure on Kabul to deny sanctuary to groups operating from its soil.
The original argument for staying in Afghanistan was never really about Afghanistan. It was about what instability there could unleash beyond its borders, whether through loose radioactive material or exported militancy. That danger did not end with the withdrawal. It moved next door, into Pakistan. The dialogue exists to jointly act against such elements. The history of shared sacrifice is documented. What remains is the will to act on both.