Pakistan’s double game in Afghanistan waits on reckoning

Facing an unyielding insurgency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan, Field Marshal Asim Munir, the all-powerful Pakistani military chief, sought to regain the favour of the United States. President Trump extended an invitation to a White House lunch on June 18, 2025.

Munir’s objective is to pull the US back into the Afghan quagmire, potentially alleviating the mounting burden of Islamist terrorists and separatists, whose casualties on the Pakistani army and security forces continue to escalate.

The US move could be viewed as another mistake in re-entering a conflict that, by definition, is a war for which the ruling Pakistani military has no one to blame.

As the conflict with Afghanistan intensifies, the army chief is heading down Actaeon’s path, where the forces Pakistan once relied upon no longer recognise its authority and now turn against it.