In recent days, a Track-II academic dialogue meditated so-called Towards Unity and Trust has become the centre of a brouhaha with former U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad misunderstanding the scholarly exercise as a Pakistani-led move to destabilize the Taliban. In a tweet, Khalilzad said that the objective of the meeting was to assemble Afghan exiles and opposition groups to plan against Taliban regime. Showing a blatant distortion of facts, many questioned his motifs by accusing him of distorting the reality as he turned a blind eye to his own history in the Doha process as Afghanistan assumed the current path of its political strand.
However, the situation is grandly the opposite of the one being propagated on social media and being picked up by some locally run pubs. The South Asian Strategic Stability Institute (SASSI) University is the prominent think tank that organized the conference and is headed by Dr Maria Sultan. It was a civil-society project designed to serve as a platform to conduct discussion, research and academic interchange regarding trust-building between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Even Khalilzad was invited, underlining the openness of the forum and the academic spirit. To present such a dialogue in the mode of a hidden political agenda serves less a critique of Pakistan and more a form of political agenda pushing of those with so much to gain.
What is self-destructive about this distortion is how some Indian media outlets went ahead to magnify this claim by Khalilzad implicating that Pakistan was intending to permit anti-Taliban resistance organizations to establish their offices in the country. This story is uninformed. It is evidently created to add suspicion and the absence of trust between Pakistan and Afghanistan, at a time when both nations are trying to find a way to reform the relationship. Such propaganda not only brings a dent to the trust of the two sides but also hurts the broader interest of regions in a peaceful cooperation.
Pakistan has dismissed these distortions out and out. Officials had emphasised that the dialogue was not government-sponsored, nor was it meant to work towards regime change in Kabul. Instead, it was aimed at constructive engagement: developing dialogue, mutual trust and regional stability. Such civil society activities serve as a complement to state-based diplomacy, and ought not to be disparaged. They contribute to bringing a variety of voices in talks on peace and security, especially in the case of Afghanistan where decades of war created deep rifts, which cannot be addressed through government-to-government negotiations alone.
Such distortions are being experienced at a critical period. In April 2025, a visit by the Pakistani Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar was of great importance, as he met with senior Talibani leaders including Acting Prime Minister Mullah Hassan Akhund and Acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi. Their talks deal with the topics of security, transit, trade, and people-to-people connectivity. This visit was representative of Pakistan strategy that has remained consistent; to interface directly with the Afghan leadership, assist in matters of stability and to enhance bilateral relations. The meetings, according to Arab News, were a sign of intentions by Pakistan to cement trust and devise feasible solutions on common problems addressing border control and trade facilitation.
As a result of that visit, the first round of Additional Secretary-Level Talks with Pakistan was held in Pakistan to crystallize what had been agreed at the Kabul visit. The mechanism pushed to simplify transit trade regulations, de-bureaucratize controls and introduce a track-and-trace system. Pakistan even made the announcement of withdrawal of some of the processing fees and implementation of measures to make insurance guarantees simple for Afghani traders. Such are practical measures in order to facilitate transporting goods and people, and demonstrate the serious intention to convert diplomacy into the everyday implications.
The May 2025 concurrence of Pakistan and Afghanistan to restore ambassadorial relations was another significant breakthrough after a series of strains broke out. The breakthrough was brokered by China in Beijing during which both sides also discussed the prospect of Afghanistan coming on board in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). According to the Washington Post, the gesture was an important crack in cooperation in the region. These measures indicate that Pakistan is pursuing long term stability and not short time politics as some critics would deem it.
Respect to consistency, this is evident through the actions of Pakistan, which has realized the fact that stability in Afghanistan, is directly beneficial to its own security interests. There is no logical reasoning to suggest that Islamabad would be at the forefront to support any anti Baluchistan initiative as cross border issues such as TTP terrorism, still remains a challenge. Instead, Pakistan has insisted several times on inclusive governance to be implemented and peaceful dialogue in the capital Kabul which resonates not only in official diplomacy, but also in civil society initiatives to mediate diplomacy.
The construction of the student movement as a political plot unveils the intentions of the people who choose to promote suspicion. The occurrence at a time when the Deputy Prime Minister of Pakistan would visit Afghanistan portrays a blunt way of trying to derail developments. Meanwhile the initiatives by Pakistan, both concerning measures of trade facilitation, agreed in Additional Secretary-Level Talks MOFA and the re-establishment of ambassador-level ties between Pakistan and Afghanistan in Beijing, demonstrate a long-term drive towards partnership and stability.
To get the region on the path to progress, positive efforts should be promoted and not distorted. Civil society initiatives such as the Towards Unity and Trust forums provide the platform of civil discourse to complement, rather than oppose, state-to-state diplomacy. False news and propaganda, spread either by social media or by the competition in the media market, only make the achievement of cooperation harder. The decision is obvious: walk towards evidence-based interaction, which leads to peace, connectivity, and regional trust, or not, encouraging disinformation to jeopardize the long-awaited, much deserved progress that Pakistan and Afghanistan are gaining.
