Pakistan and the US 25 Years After 9/11: Why Islamabad Still Matters

By Irina Tsukerman:Twenty-five years after 9/11, the United States has more counterterrorism experience than any country in history. It killed or captured most of al-Qaeda’s original senior leadership, dismantled the infrastructure behind its centralized command, and disrupted its financial and communications networks. It built intelligence and special operations capabilities no one else can match, and it made it far harder for a large terrorist organization to establish the kind of international headquarters al-Qaeda once ran from Afghanistan.But the threat didn’t disappear. It changed shape. Al-Qaeda adapted to the pressure by decentralizing, and its branches embedded themselves in local conflicts and political environments across Africa, South Asia, the Middle East and Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent has kept its networks in Afghanistan, under Taliban rule. Affiliates in the Sahel, Somalia and other places with weak government control have acquired local revenue, community relationships, territorial influence and years of combat experience. Their ties to al-Qaeda’s international leadership vary widely, but decentralization is exactly what let the movement survive repeated leadership losses.Afghanistan is again part of the problem. UN monitors continue to report an al-Qaeda presence under Taliban rule, including training activity and contacts with Taliban officials and commanders. Reports of training links involving Russian actors, including alleged GRU-linked activity, vary in quality and are hard to verify independently, so they deserve careful handling. Even the possibility shows how much has changed since 2001. Terrorist groups can now operate alongside governments, intelligence services, criminal networks, private military actors and regional armed groups whose interests overlap temporarily without any formal alliance.Iran adds another layer. Senior al-Qaeda figures and their families have lived there at different times, and US officials have described arrangements that let parts of the organization maintain communications and facilitation networks from Iranian territory. The relationship has always been tense, since al-Qaeda’s Sunni jihadist ideology clashes with the Iranian regime’s Shiite revolutionary one. Shared enemies and convenience have still produced periods of accommodation, and the presence of senior figures there raises real questions about how Tehran has used its control over their movements.The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq consumed trillions of dollars, thousands of American lives and decades of senior political attention. They also reshaped the national-security establishment. Intelligence agencies, the military, law enforcement and Treasury built deep expertise in terrorist targeting, terror financing, counterinsurgency and partner-force development.Meanwhile, China expanded and modernized its military, built sophisticated missile and naval capabilities, and extended its economic reach into strategically important regions. Russia rebuilt its forces and launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Iran developed a regional network of armed partners while growing its missile, drone, cyber and nuclear capabilities. North Korea built a far more dangerous nuclear and ballistic missile arsenal. US attention stayed heavily focused on counterterrorism while these governments studied American methods, developed asymmetric responses and prepared for confrontations that looked nothing like Afghanistan.The war also exposed how hard it is to destroy an ideological movement by targeting leaders. The US became extraordinarily effective at finding individual terrorists, but extremist movements adapted their recruitment, messaging, structures, financing and geography faster than Washington found ways to reduce their appeal. Al-Qaeda spawned affiliates and local partnerships. ISIS grew out of al-Qaeda in Iraq and briefly held a caliphate. ISIS-K emerged in Afghanistan has shown ambitions well beyond South Asia. The Taliban returned to power twenty years after being removed, giving extremist groups a political and security environment very different from what Washington expected to leave behind.Intelligence services now have to follow recruitment, ideology, financing, family and tribal ties, organized crime, political protection, online communities, foreign sponsorship and the relationships between terrorist groups and state actors. They also have to understand how extremists learn from military pressure, exploit instability, enter local economies and reinvent themselves when their structures become vulnerable.Technology has sped all of this up. Encrypted communications, cheap commercial drones, cryptocurrency, social media, commercial surveillance tools, AI-generated content, cyber tools and deepfakes now put capabilities in the hands of small groups and lone operatives that once required a state’s resources. Iran’s ties to armed groups show how state and non-state capabilities interact. China’s expanding technological footprint raises questions about surveillance, data, infrastructure and telecommunications. Russia has cultivated armed actors and exploited instability in several regions. Terrorist groups operating in these environments can gain indirect access to expertise, weapons, financing or political protection even when governments have no interest in their ideology.The Trump administration has moved away from the expansive military model of the post-9/11 years. It has little interest in rebuilding a large presence in Afghanistan or returning to counterinsurgency and nation-building. It prefers smaller footprints, intelligence cooperation, targeted operations, pressure on regional governments, and partners who handle threats inside their own territory. China now takes a much larger share of defense planning. Russia remains a major military and nuclear threat, Iran keeps challenging US interests across the Middle East, and North Korea has expanded its arsenal. Maritime threats have returned to strategic waterways, and cyber, critical infrastructure, space, AI, supply chains and economic security all compete for money, personnel and attention. The administration seems willing to accept more counterterrorism risk to avoid another long commitment, pursuing individual groups through intelligence relationships, regional partners, financial pressure and occasional strikes.That is where Pakistan comes in, because geography doesn’t change with American priorities. Afghanistan remains unstable. ISIS-K is active. The TTP has escalated its attacks on Pakistan. Al-Qaeda and associated networks retain a presence across the region. Iran and China are neighbors, and the Arabian Sea connects Pakistan to the wider Indian Ocean and Gulf security environment.Pakistan also has something Washington lost when it left Afghanistan: proximity. Its security services have human networks, language skills, border knowledge, interrogation experience, local relationships and institutional memory that remote surveillance can’t reproduce.Pakistan earned that expertise at a terrible price. Its civilians and security personnel died in enormous numbers in successive waves of terrorism, in attacks on schools, markets, mosques, political gatherings, military installations, police stations, religious minorities and government institutions. The 2014 Army Public School massacre in Peshawar, where terrorists murdered more than 130 children, showed the brutality Pakistan confronted. Pakistani authorities helped capture important al-Qaeda figures, disrupted networks, shared intelligence with the US, supported logistics for Afghanistan, investigated terrorist financing and ran large military operations in areas where extremists had built infrastructure. Those operations forced organizations to relocate, reorganize and change their methods, and US agencies benefited directly.Today’s relationship is transactional, and that suits both sides for now. Washington can work with Islamabad against ISIS-K and the TTP without rebuilding the comprehensive partnership of the Afghan war years. Pakistan can provide valuable access and intelligence on Afghanistan even as the US builds much closer ties with India, a relationship that now spans defense, technology, intelligence, maritime security, supply chains and competition with China. Pakistan has diversified its own partnerships too, with China as its principal strategic partner across defense, technology, telecommunications and infrastructure, and with growing defense and political cooperation with Turkey. That is a natural result of a changing world.

Both sides have strong reasons to keep the channel open. The TTP is an immediate danger to Pakistan, ISIS-K threatens Pakistani interests as much as Western ones, and Taliban rule hasn’t delivered the border security Islamabad hoped for. American intelligence, financial surveillance, technology and diplomatic reach remain valuable to Pakistan. The US, meanwhile, can’t track ISIS-K without information from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Central Asia, the Gulf and Europe, and Pakistan can contribute human intelligence, border information, financial intelligence and knowledge of networks along the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier.

Financing is a good example. Extremist groups now mix conventional banking, informal transfer networks, charities, businesses, criminal enterprises, cryptocurrency and online fundraising. Pakistan’s position between Afghanistan, Iran, China, the Gulf and the Indian Ocean gives it visibility into financial and logistical flows across several jurisdictions. The same goes for emerging technology. Pakistan has deep operational experience with suicide attacks, assaults on military facilities, assassinations, cross-border infiltration and attacks on Chinese personnel and infrastructure, while US agencies bring technological, financial and intelligence capabilities that Pakistan values, including against drones, AI-generated propaganda, deepfakes and cyber threats.The partnership will have to keep adapting. Washington has less reason to organize its regional strategy around Pakistan now that Afghanistan no longer consumes American foreign policy and China and India loom larger in US planning. Future administrations will want clear understandings on how sensitive intelligence is shared and protected, and cooperation will depend on the quality of information each side offers, on mutual trust and on candid communication.Trump may be comfortable managing this through transactional cooperation. His successors will inherit an establishment focused on China, technology and the Indo-Pacific, along with the record of Afghanistan and al-Qaeda’s renewed presence there. The question for them will be how much political capital to invest in a counterterrorism partnership with Islamabad. The lesson of twenty-five years is that terrorism rarely respects borders and no country can track it alone. Washington may no longer build its regional strategy around Pakistan, but it will still need a partner that knows the terrain.