Pakistan was always an improbable choice as a peace broker. The expectation that Islamabad could translate access into outcomes has long rested on a misreading of its diplomatic capacity. It is a state that sits at the intersection of multiple geopolitical fault lines, but proximity has repeatedly been mistaken for leverage. The recent collapse of negotiations it hosted was therefore not an aberration. It was a continuation of a pattern.
The logic behind selecting Pakistan is easy to understand. It maintains working relationships across adversarial camps, keeps channels open where others cannot, and has historically served as a conduit between actors that do not speak to each other directly. This creates the impression of utility. Yet mediation at the highest level is not built on access alone. It requires the ability to shape incentives, impose costs, and guarantee compliance. Pakistan has consistently lacked all three.
The precedent most often overlooked, and most instructive, is the U.S. engagement with the Taliban that culminated in the Doha Agreement. For years, Pakistan was central to bringing the Taliban to the table. Its territory hosted key leadership networks, its intelligence services maintained lines of communication, and its diplomatic apparatus facilitated contact at critical moments. By any conventional measure, it was indispensable to the process.
But indispensability did not translate into control. The terms of negotiation were dictated by the principals. Washington negotiated directly with the Taliban, often bypassing Islamabad. The Taliban, for their part, pursued a singular objective, the restoration of power in Afghanistan. Pakistan could convene meetings, but it could not alter that objective, nor could it enforce commitments once made.
The agreement itself reflected this imbalance. It outlined commitments on counterterrorism assurances and intra Afghan dialogue, yet it lacked credible enforcement mechanisms. Within eighteen months, the Afghan government had collapsed and the Taliban had taken Kabul. The settlement functioned as a managed disengagement rather than a durable peace. Pakistan, despite its centrality to the process, was unable to guarantee compliance, shape the political transition, or prevent the military outcome that followed.
What makes this precedent particularly relevant is not simply that the agreement failed in its broader aims. It is that Pakistan’s role within it remained confined to facilitation. It was present at every stage, yet decisive at none. This is the structural limitation that continues to define its diplomatic engagements.
The same constraint has been visible in its internal security environment. Efforts to negotiate with groups such as the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan have repeatedly broken down, often followed by renewed violence. A state that struggles to stabilise negotiated outcomes within its own borders is inherently limited in its ability to guarantee them beyond.
Against this backdrop, the recent talks hosted by Pakistan were burdened with unrealistic expectations. The issues under negotiation were not procedural disputes that could be bridged through shuttle diplomacy. They were rooted in fundamental disagreements over sovereignty, security, and regional order. Such conflicts require a mediator capable not only of convening dialogue but of underwriting its outcome. Pakistan was never in a position to do so.
Its internal political dynamics further narrowed its room for manoeuvre. Civil military asymmetries, economic fragility, and competing external dependencies constrain the state’s ability to take decisive positions. Any overt alignment risks domestic backlash or external recalibration. As a result, Pakistan defaults to a posture of calibrated ambiguity, maintaining engagement with all sides while committing fully to none. This may preserve relationships, but it undermines credibility as a broker of final settlement.
In this sense, the failure of the recent negotiations was not simply the product of intractable differences between the parties involved. It was also a function of the mediator’s structural limitations. Pakistan could host, facilitate, and sustain dialogue for a period. It could not transform that dialogue into agreement.
Seen in historical perspective, the outcome should not have been surprising. Pakistan’s track record as a mediator is not one of consistent breakdown, but of consistent incompletion. Processes begin, channels open, tensions are temporarily managed, but resolution remains elusive. The pattern is sufficiently clear that it should inform expectations.
The error therefore lies less in Pakistan’s conduct than in the assumptions placed upon it. It is treated as a broker because it has access. It is expected to deliver because it is present. Yet presence is not power, and access is not authority. Without the capacity to enforce or guarantee, mediation becomes an exercise in managing conversations rather than resolving conflicts.
The recent collapse of talks merely reinforces what its diplomatic history has already demonstrated. Pakistan is an effective intermediary when the objective is contact. It is an ineffective mediator when the objective is settlement. Expecting otherwise was not just optimistic. It was analytically unsound.
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Sergio Restelli
Sergio Restelli is an Italian political advisor, author and geopolitical expert. He served in the Craxi government in the 1990's as the special assistant to the deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Justice Martelli and worked closely with anti-mafia magistrates Falcone and Borsellino. Over the past decades he has been involved in peace building and diplomacy efforts in the Middle East and North Africa. He has written for Geopolitica and several Italian online and print media. In 2020 his first fiction "Napoli sta bene" was published.
