Islamabad, Oct 4 (IANS) Pakistan's military pressure on Afghanistan's Taliban over the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) may not win Islamabad the cooperation it wants, and could push Kabul closer to India, a report said ahead of the Moscow Format talks on Monday.

"This exposes the limits of coercion. Pakistan can raise the price of non-compliance through border pressure and military force, as its latest strikes inside Afghanistan demonstrate. But if the obstacle is partly structural, greater pressure will not necessarily produce proportionately greater cooperation. It can also increase Kabul's incentive to reduce its vulnerability to Islamabad," an analysis in Middle East Monitor said.

India has steadily rebuilt ties with the Taliban government without formally recognising it, the report noted. That gives Kabul diplomatic and economic room beyond Pakistan.

"For India, deterioration in Pakistan–Taliban relations offers an opportunity to recover strategic space. Pakistan thus confronts an uncomfortable reversal: pressure intended to make the Taliban more responsive to its security demands can encourage Kabul to deepen precisely the relationship Islamabad has historically sought to constrain," it said.

The Taliban accuse Pakistan of helping armed opposition fighters, including former Afghan security personnel, who have clashed with Taliban forces in Badakhshan and Nuristan.

"But Pakistan would not necessarily need regime change to increase its leverage. Opposition forces capable of contesting parts of Afghanistan could erode the Taliban's monopoly of force, compel it to divert military resources internally and create pressure that cross-border coercion has failed to generate," the report said.

The Moscow meeting will bring Afghanistan and Pakistan together with China, India, Iran, Russia and the Central Asian states. The report said it may produce a temporary de-escalation, but Pakistan's deeper problem will remain.

"The question after Moscow will therefore not simply be whether Pakistan and the Taliban can stop their latest confrontation. It will be whether Islamabad still believes the Afghan order created after 2021 can be made compatible with its security requirements through changes in Taliban behaviour alone," it said.

--IANS

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