years, and this presents a pressing threat to the security of the Central Asian Republics, some of whom have mutual defense agreements with Russia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan through the CSTO) or are part of the same general integration organization (all of the aforementioned plus Uzbekistan as per the SCO).

Russia fears being drawn into a Central Asian anti-terrorist quagmire and would prefer to proactively defeat terrorism in Afghanistan through the use of secondary forces, whether the Kabul government or more recently the interest in passively supporting the Taliban in this capacity. The costs of losing the anti-terrorist struggle in Afghanistan would be enormous for Russia, since the consequent destabilization of the Central Asian Republics would trigger an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in the region which would likely manifest itself asground between the two Afghan actors in order to see them redirect their military efforts against Daesh instead. Pakistan plays a pivotal role in all of this because of its historic relations to both parties and the simple fact that it shares the longest border with Afghanistan out of all of Kabul’s neighbors. Russian-Pakistani strategic coordination in the Afghan context will serve as the driver for further cooperation between the two sides, and is already becoming the crucible on which their new era of relations is being formed. The mutually beneficial convergence of interests in seeing the defeat of Daesh, the recognition of the Taliban as a legitimate political actor in the Afghan context, and the war-torn country’s stabilization is bringing the two parties together at an astounding