The latest negotiations round held in Istanbul, Türkiye, from October 25th to 30th, 2025, between the Afghan Taliban and Islamabad ended with an interim understanding to implement the ceasefire that was earlier agreed in Qatar. Further technicalities of the interim understanding will be discussed in the next round of talks that will start on November 6th, 2025. The international mediation and continued dialogue for the past several weeks is a good omen; however, the prospects for successful dialogue and conflict resolution between Islamabad and the Afghan Taliban remain slim and unpredictable.
It is primarily due to deteriorating bilateral ties between the two neighbors since August 2021. Before Türkiye and Qatar, China also made an effort to give peace a chance between the two neighbors in a series of trilateral talks, but to no vein. There are four principal factors that render the peace efforts between the two actors inherently fragile, thereby diminishing the likelihood of sustainable peace.
Firstly, Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban lack a shared understanding or unified
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