In the jagged mountain ranges straddling Afghanistan and Pakistan, a resurgent Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (T.T.P.), are ratcheting up a relentless and deadly guerrilla war against Pakistani security forces as I write this piece. Roads clogged with convoys of battered trucks, overloaded with bedding, cooking pots, sacks of grain, and families fleeing in haste, are now familiar sights. Many have sought refuge in schools, government offices, and private homes in safer parts of the district.
Pakistan is, without doubt, experiencing its own Boko Haram moment and this is not merely an insurgency; it is the bitter harvest of decades of shortsighted political choices. But to understand how the tiger turned on its rider, a little bit of history will suffice here.
In 1994, a one-eyed cleric in Kandahar named Mullah Omar, a veteran of the anti-Soviet jihad, gathered a band of religious students who sought to end the chaos of Afghanistan’s civil war. They called themselves the Talibans. Promising stability under God’s law, Omar’s Taliban rose swiftly, sweeping across Afghanistan and capturing Kabul within two years. For Afghans weary of warlord brutality, the Taliban seemed like a reprieve. But for the world, their rise marked the birth of a movement whose fanaticism and brutality would reverberate far beyond Afghanistan’s borders.
The Taliban’s ascent was not solely born of Afghan desperation. It was also the product of calculated but dangerously myopic bargains. Chief among their patrons was General Hamid Gul, the powerful former head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Gul, nicknamed “the godfather of the Taliban,” saw them as a tool to secure Pakistan’s strategic depth in Afghanistan, a buffer against Indian influence. He offered ideological backing, training, and defense of the Taliban project, believing Pakistan could shape and contain it. In truth, he was playing with fire.
That fire soon spread. Under Taliban protection, Osama bin Laden built the network that carried out the September 11 attacks, the deadliest assault ever on American soil. Yet Pakistan, even while partnering publicly with Washington in the “War on Terror,” shielded Taliban leaders and famously sheltered bin Laden himself in Abbottabad, a stone’s throw from a military academy. What began as “strategic depth” became a national disaster, burning Pakistan’s credibility abroad and destabilizing its security at home.
The tragedy deepened in 2007 when militants within Pakistan coalesced into the TTP. Unlike the Afghan Taliban, these militants aimed their fury inward. They bombed markets, attacked mosques, assassinated religious leaders. Their most horrifying act came in 2014 when they stormed a school in Peshawar, slaughtering over 140 children and teachers. For a nation that had once midwifed the Taliban, this was a brutal reckoning: the monster had turned on its maker.
Pakistan launched fierce military campaigns and claimed victory by 2018, boasting that the TTP had been crushed. But the illusion of peace was shattered when the Taliban returned to power in Kabul in 2021. The TTP drew new strength, reuniting splinter factions and absorbing Al Qaeda affiliates. Armed now with American-made weapons abandoned in Afghanistan; sniper rifles, night-vision goggles, drones, they began a new offensive, pushing beyond the tribal areas into Punjab, the political and economic heart of Pakistan.
Scenes of displacement have returned. Roads are again clogged with desperate families, children clinging to bundles of belongings, entire communities uprooted. The ghosts of past miscalculations are alive, and the bitter harvest of transactional politics is upon Pakistan once more.
But Pakistan is not alone in this pattern of folly. The United States, too, armed and funded the Afghan mujahideen during the Cold War to fight the Soviets, inadvertently laying the foundations for the Taliban and Al Qaeda. In Iraq, Washington propped up Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war, only to later face him as a rogue dictator who invaded Kuwait. The logic was the same: short-term gain, long-term catastrophe. This is the curse of transactional leadership. It mortgages the future for a fleeting sense of control in the present.
Leaders imagine they are manipulating extremists as pawns in a game of chess. But pawns have wills of their own. Ideologies, once unleashed, cannot be boxed back in. Gul believed the Taliban would be Pakistan’s strategic tool; American officials believed Saddam Hussein could be their counterweight to Iran. Both were catastrophically wrong.
The cost of these miscalculations is always borne by the powerless. The families of Bajaur trudging through the mountains, the children massacred in Peshawar, the passengers fleeing collapsing towers in New York, these are the true victims of short-term bargains struck in secret rooms by ambitious men. The architects of such strategies rarely pay with their lives. Ordinary people do.
Then there’s Saudi Arabia, a Wahhabi theocracy where Salafi extremism is not just preached but exported. Saudi Clerics breed radicals, while wealthy patrons, hiding behind “charities,” bankroll madrassas around the world, including the very institutions that gave rise to Mullah Omar. For decades, the United States has propped up the Saudi monarchy, even as 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi citizens. Yet, despite this staggering complicity in global terror, few Saudis have been held accountable. Complacency, however, would be a grave mistake, they, too, will one day face the reckoning they have long evaded.
Nigeria offers its own grim parallel. Boko Haram was once courted and tolerated by politicians in Borno for electoral leverage. But it soon broke free, splintering into factions with some pledging allegiance to the Islamic State. Similarly, transnational fighters from the Sahel were invited into Nigeria to sway elections, but after the ballots were cast, they refused to leave. They turned instead to kidnapping, banditry, and trafficking, unleashing a wave of insecurity that now threatens the very elites who once saw them as convenient allies.
For decades, successive Nigerian administrations have treated terror financing with the casual indifference of political expediency. While the U.S. State Department has moved decisively, sanctioning Boko Haram sponsors, some of whom now rot in UAE prisons, here at home, their collaborators stroll freely through our streets. Even more damning, many of them sit in positions of power, quietly pulling the strings of governance while the nation pays the price of their impunity.
The lesson is universal: the monsters created for expedience never stay loyal. They mutate, grow stronger, and eventually devour their masters. Mullah Omar’s ragtag students reshaped global politics. Boko Haram’s so-called political tool became a global jihadist franchise. The transactional bargains that midwifed them are now cautionary tales etched in blood.
If Pakistan, Nigeria, or any nation wishes to escape this cycle, leaders must abandon the illusion of clever deals with extremists. Real security lies not in proxy wars or militant allies but in building just societies, resilient institutions, and inclusive politics that deny extremists the grievances they exploit. Anything less is sowing seeds for future catastrophe.
History has spoken clearly: whether in Kabul, Baghdad, Maiduguri, or Peshawar, the monsters of transactional leadership never remain in their cages. They return, and when they do, they bring only rubble, blood, and regret.
Osmund Agbo is a US-based medical doctor and author. His works include Black Grit, White Knuckles: The Philosophy of Black Renaissance and a fiction work titled The Velvet Court: Courtesan Chronicles. His latest works, Pray, Let the Shaman Die and Ma’am, I Do Not Come to You for Love, have just been released. He can be reached@ [email protected]
