Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi’s meeting with Russian Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev on the sidelines of a special gathering of SCO ministers in Bishkek has produced agreements on illegal migration and drug trafficking, but the significance lies beyond the photo-op. It reflects a hardening regional reality: Afghanistan’s instability has matured into a security economy in which militancy, narcotics, undocumented movement, smuggling and terror financing often travel through the cracks. From Pakistan’s vantage point, after paying in blood for every illusion about its western frontier, the question is no longer whether Kabul accepts Islamabad’s concerns. It is whether regional states can build enough pressure, intelligence and enforcement capacity to act on them.
That Russia also wants drug routes and extremist spillovers checked before they pass deeper through Central Asia resonates with Pakistan’s demand for a western border that is not treated as an open corridor for militants, smugglers, traffickers and undocumented networks.
Central Asian states have their own anxieties, which is why Mr Naqvi’s separate meetings with his counterparts from Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan matter. According to the interior ministry, discussions with Tajikistan focused on terrorist camps inside Afghanistan, while Pakistan has already pointed to the presence of around 25 terrorist organisations there.
These developments become all the more paramount in light of Pakistan’s security landscape, which deteriorated sharply in May, with militant violence rising by 27 per cent, according to the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies. The country recorded 128 attacks in May, compared to 101 in April; civilian deaths rose by 92 per cent and casualties among security personnel by 143 per cent. Balochistan emerged as the worst-affected province, while Khyber Pakhtunkhwa remained under sustained pressure.
The narcotics picture is more complicated than old assumptions allow. Even if Afghan opium cultivation has fallen sharply, that does not mean the drug economy has died. UNODC estimates Afghan opium cultivation at 10,200 hectares in 2025, a fraction of the 232,000 hectares recorded in 2022, but it also warns that methamphetamine trends around Afghanistan appear largely uninterrupted. Synthetic drugs are harder to detect, easier to move and less dependent on traditional poppy cycles. For Pakistan, narcotics control cannot remain stuck at seizures and press conferences. It must follow laboratories, precursors, transit routes, financial trails and protection networks.
Bishkek is useful because it places our case inside a regional frame. Mr Naqvi’s engagements show that Islamabad is not inventing a problem for bilateral leverage. The anxiety is shared on all corners.
Still, the test, as always, is whether Pakistan can turn agreements signed in regional capitals into cleaner borders, better prosecutions, disrupted drug networks and a Kabul conversation that moves beyond grievance and denial. *