by Filza ASIM
South Asia has been talking about big plans for regional connectivity for years, but lately, those dreams seem tangled in contradictions especially when you look at Pakistan and Afghanistan. Everyone keeps repeating the usual buzzwords: trade corridors, transit routes, regional integration. You’ll hear them in speeches, see them in reports, read them in the news. But let’s be honest: this talk feels more symbolic than real, floating way above the actual security mess on the ground.
So what’s really happening? It’s not just another case of policy falling short. The real issue is deeper, a kind of paradox baked right into the way people talk about connectivity, as if it’s always a good thing, somehow separate from the tough political and security realities needed to actually make it work. If you dig into the way folks frame this whole idea, you’ll notice the same old split: connectivity versus security, free movement versus control, integration versus sovereignty. Security usually gets painted as the bad guy, the thing holding back economic progress. But Pakistan’s situation tells a more complicated story. The country keeps pushing connectivity as a big strategic goal, eager to serve as a bridge between Central and South Asia. But at the same time, Pakistan insists on tight border controls and fighting terrorism, showing just how shaky that supposed line is between being open and staying secure.
Rather than negating connectivity, Pakistan’s position suggests that the concept itself is incomplete when abstracted from governance and enforcement.
The return of the Taliban to power initially generated expectations of a post-conflict reset grounded in shared geography and economic interdependence. These expectations, however, were constructed largely at the level of diplomatic imagination. As violence kept spilling across borders, the gap between what leaders promised and what people actually saw grew impossible to miss. In Baudrillard’s words, all that talk of regional connectivity turned into a kind of hyper reality, a glossy simulation kept alive by endless speeches and official plans, even though real-life conditions made it clear things weren’t working. Connectivity was performed discursively long before it was secured operationally.
From Pakistan’s perspective, the dilemma is less ideological than structural. Pakistan sits at the center of a tangled web. It’s not just facing militants or managing border fences and surveillance tech. There’s a whole mix at play: trade rules, intelligence operations, and the pressure of international expectations. If you look through the lens of Actor-Network Theory, you see that policy decisions don’t just come from politicians calling the shots. They come from all these different forces pushing and pulling on each other. The fences, the biometric scanners, the rules for who crosses and who doesn’t, these aren’t just tools. They’re active players in the bigger security game, shaping what real “connectivity” even looks like on the ground.
Afghanistan’s got its own set of knots to untangle. The Taliban want legitimacy and access to the outside world, but they’re boxed in by sanctions, barely-there recognition, and shaky institutions. For them, transit trade and regional links are painted as economic lifelines. But this often shifts the burden for keeping things secure onto neighboring countries, especially Pakistan. And with no real system in place to stop militants from slipping across the border, there’s a glaring gap between what everyone hopes for and what’s actually possible. You can’t paper over that with talk.
All of this isn’t just about Pakistan and Afghanistan. The whole region feels the effects. South Asia’s big plans for energy pipelines, trade routes, or CPEC spinoffs, none of it moves without Pakistan acting as the main hub, setting the rules and keeping the wheels turning. When Pakistan’s security concerns are dismissed as secondary or excessive, connectivity itself becomes an empty signifier: invoked repeatedly, but operationalized rarely. Complexity theory is instructive here. Connectivity systems are non-linear, adaptive, and highly sensitive to disruption. Small security failures can cascade into systemic breakdowns, undermining entire corridors rather than isolated segments.
Critiques of Pakistan’s security-centric approach often rest on a linear model of development, where openness automatically generates stability. Yet historical experience in conflict-prone regions suggests the opposite: infrastructure without governance frequently amplifies risk. By resisting premature liberalization, Pakistan’s policy posture reflects an implicit recognition of complexity, an understanding that economic systems embedded in fragile political environments do not behave predictably or incrementally.
Importantly, Pakistan’s approach does not foreclose cooperation. Its repeated calls for structured dialogue, intelligence coordination, and phased facilitation suggest a preference for conditional integration rather than isolation. Such sequencing aligns with international confidence-building practices, where trust is produced gradually through verifiable action. The friction lies not in Pakistan’s unwillingness to integrate, but in the temporal mismatch between Afghanistan’s demand for immediate economic relief and Pakistan’s insistence on security benchmarks.
The international community plays a decisive role in sustaining this paradox. Global advocacy for regional connectivity often obscures asymmetries of responsibility. Transit states like Pakistan are expected to enable movement while absorbing the security externalities generated beyond their borders. A critical discourse analysis reveals how this expectation is normalized through development language that foregrounds mobility and trade while marginalizing enforcement and risk. In doing so, global narratives reproduce power hierarchies in which responsibility is unevenly distributed.
Look at the bigger picture, and you’ll see Pakistan isn’t acting in isolation. Its approach fits a global trend: countries now treat infrastructure and trade routes as strategic weapons, not just economic tools. Security and economics have gotten tangled up. Pakistan’s choices don’t stand out, they’re exactly what you’d expect in a world where connections between countries are no longer neutral ground. Everything’s contested, regulated, and loaded with political weight.
This whole security-versus-connectivity problem between Pakistan and Afghanistan pulls back the curtain on how regional diplomacy really works. Building economic ties isn’t just about technical know-how. It’s politically grounded in power dynamics, responsibility, and a basic need for trust. Until leaders deal with those realities, all the talk about integration is just for show. Pakistan’s careful, sometimes slow approach isn’t just dragging its feet. It’s an effort to build something stable, something that actually sticks, by tying big ideas to real-world facts.
Slow progress calls it incrementalism doesn’t mean Pakistan’s undecided. It’s a game plan. Step-by-step connections, setting conditions, bringing in more players to watch over the process, these moves recognize how complicated the region really is. For Pakistan, it’s a way to chase economic growth while staying smart about risks. For Afghanistan, it’s a shot to prove it can be a dependable partner. And for South Asia as a whole, it’s a reminder: you don’t get real, lasting integration from speeches. You get it by building networks that can take a hit and keep going.
