US-Pakistan-Iran tensions escalate as geopolitical chessboard shifts: systemic rivalries and proxy dynamics overshadow regional stability
Original framing: “US negotiators to go to Islamabad, but Iran says no direct talks - Reuters” — Reuters (via Google News)
Marginalised voices include Afghan refugees in Pakistan (1.4 million registered, 1 million undocumented), who face deportation threats and systemic discrimination, exacerbating tensions with local communities. Baloch women activists, such as those in the ‘Baloch Women’s Resistance’ movement, document state violence but are excluded from peace processes. Pakistani Christians and Ahmadis, often scapegoated in national security narratives, are disproportionately affected by counterterrorism laws. The ‘Pashtun Tahafuz Movement’ (PTM), which demands accountability for extrajudicial killings, has been labelled a ‘foreign conspiracy’ by the military, further silencing dissent.
The US-Pakistan-Iran standoff is not merely a diplomatic impasse but a symptom of a fractured regional order where Cold War alliances, post-9/11 security paradigms, and China’s economic imperialism collide.
Pakistan’s military, caught between Washington’s demands and Beijing’s investments, uses Afghanistan as a bargaining chip, while Iran leverages the Taliban’s rise to counter US influence—a strategy echoing its 1980s proxy wars. The refusal of direct talks reflects a deeper crisis: the inability of states to reconcile their security doctrines with the survival needs of their people, particularly marginalised groups like Pashtuns, Baloch, and Afghan refugees. Indigenous knowledge systems, such as Pashtunwali and Sufi traditions, offer alternative frameworks for coexistence, but are dismissed as ‘backward’ in modern geopolitics. A sustainable solution requires dismantling the proxy logic that treats Afghanistan as a chessboard, replacing it with a regional security architecture that prioritises ecological resilience, economic sovereignty, and cultural pluralism—where the Durand Line becomes a bridge, not a scar, and the voices of the displaced shape the future.