The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan last August has caught Pakistan in a terrible bind - it has to bear the continuing fallout from the collapse of the previous government and its replacement by a regime which no country recognises.

What's more, the new rulers in Kabul have their own axe to grind with Islamabad and are giving Pakistan security headaches - earlier this month, five Pakistani soldiers were killed at a border post in Khurram district by militants inside Afghanistan. The Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also called the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for the deaths. Islamabad warned that it "expects that the interim Afghan government will not allow conduct of such activities against Pakistan in future".