Pakistan launched airstrikes on Afghanistan and claimed to have killed hundreds of Afghan Taliban fighters on Friday in a major escalation between the two former allies.
In addition to attacking Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, Pakistan also attacked the city of Kandahar, home of Afghan Taliban supreme leader Haibatullah Akhunzada. The attacks came hours after the Afghan Taliban said they had carried out a large-scale military operation against Pakistani targets on Thursday, capturing 19 Pakistani military posts and killing 55 Pakistani soldiers.
Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Asif today declared that Pakistan’s “cup of patience had overflowed” following a series of recent terrorist attacks on Pakistani soil. “Now there is an open war between us and you,” he wrote in an open message to Afghan leaders on X, formerly Twitter.
Why do we write this?
Tensions between former allies Pakistan and Afghanistan have once again come to a head, with Pakistan’s Defense Minister saying the neighbors are now in an “open war”. Islamabad and Kabul have been able to ease tensions before, but the gap only grows.
The flare-up follows a similar round of deadly skirmishes in early October that ended with a ceasefire brokered by Türkiye and Qatar.
Pakistan was once a close ally of the Afghan Taliban and was instrumental in the group’s creation. When the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 2021, Pakistan’s then Prime Minister Imran Khan welcomed the development and said the Afghan people had “broken the shackles of slavery” to the West.
But relations between Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban quickly began to deteriorate when the former began to experience a sharp increase in terrorist attacks along the Durand Line, the porous border between the two Muslim neighbors. Islamabad accuses Kabul of providing a safe haven to militant groups such as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA). Kabul has consistently denied the allegations.
In recent months, Pakistan’s government has also sought to portray the Taliban administration as illegitimate. During a press conference today, Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar accused the Afghan Taliban of repressing the people of Afghanistan. “They are trying to subjugate women, minorities and children and have usurped the basic rights of the citizens of Afghanistan. That is why I will call it an illegitimate regime,” he said.
As relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have deteriorated, relations between Pakistan and the United States have enjoyed something of a renaissance. Experts in the region have speculated that the United States could back Pakistan in launching a regime change operation in Kabul. US President Donald Trump has made no secret of his desire to retake the Bagram air base, controlled by the United States until 2021 and currently under the control of the Taliban. The Taliban have so far rejected their demands.
Islamabad is also wary of growing cooperation between archrivals India and Afghanistan.
In October, during the latest round of skirmishes between Afghanistan and Pakistan, Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi made a high-profile visit to New Delhi and drew the ire of Islamabad when he signed a statement referring to the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir as part of India. The status of the Himalayan region, which both India and Pakistan claim in their entirety, has been the main driver of conflicts between the two nuclear-armed neighbors.
The failure of Pakistan and Afghanistan to find common ground despite several rounds of talks threatens regional stability and has disrupted life along Pakistan’s northwestern border.
In the immediate line of fire are Afghan refugees who fled to Pakistan during the Soviet Afghan War of the 1980s and in the civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal. As the relationship between Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban deteriorated, Pakistan launched a mass deportation campaign, sending more than a million refugees back to Afghanistan. Taliban officials on Friday accused Pakistan of attacking at least one camp where deportees were housed.
