Pakistan bombed Taliban government forces in Kabul and Kandahar overnight in the first direct strikes on Taliban military sites since the group returned to power in 2021, a sharp rupture between the neighboring Islamic nations that Islamabad’s defense minister described as “open war.” The escalation raises the risk of a broader conflict along the 2,600-kilometer (1,615-mile) frontier and deepens a crisis already fueled by cross-border militant attacks.
“Our cup of patience has overflowed. Now it is open war between us and you [Afghanistan],” Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif said Tuesday, as Pakistani security sources said the operation used air-to-ground missiles against Taliban military offices and posts in Kabul, Kandahar and Paktia province.
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Pakistan’s military said its forces struck 22 Afghan military targets and killed 274 Taliban officials and militants, and that at least 12 Pakistani soldiers were also killed. “An effective, immediate and brutal response was given,” military spokesperson Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry told reporters. The figures could not be independently verified.
The Taliban acknowledged the overnight airstrikes in Kabul, Kandahar and Paktia and said Pakistan followed with attacks Tuesday on Paktia, Paktika, Khost and Laghman. Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said there were no casualties in the night strikes but reported civilian casualties from Tuesday’s attacks without giving numbers. He said Taliban “retaliatory operations” lasted two hours, leaving 13 Taliban fighters dead and 12 wounded, and claimed 55 Pakistani soldiers were killed and 19 posts seized. Those claims also could not be independently confirmed.
Amid the hostile exchanges, Mujahid said the Taliban remains willing to negotiate. “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has always tried to resolve issues through dialogue, and now also we want to resolve this matter through dialogue,” he said.
A video of the strikes in Kabul, whose location was verified by Reuters, showed thick black smoke rising from two sites and a large blaze. Reuters witnesses in the capital reported loud blasts, the sound of jets and a wave of ambulance sirens after the strikes.
The Taliban’s defense ministry earlier said it had “successfully conducted” drone attacks on military targets in Pakistan. Islamabad’s information minister, Attaullah Tarar, said the strikes were carried out instead by Pakistani Taliban militants and that all drones were downed with “no damage to life.”
The confrontation follows Pakistani airstrikes earlier this week that Islamabad said targeted Pakistani Taliban and Islamic State militants inside eastern Afghanistan. Kabul and the United Nations said those strikes killed 13 civilians, prompting the Taliban to warn of a strong response.
Diplomatic efforts to contain the crisis intensified. Russia, China, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are seeking to mediate, according to diplomats and news reports. Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi told Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan that any solution would require commitment “from the other side,” Afghanistan’s foreign ministry said. Iran, which borders both countries, also offered to help, even as it navigates sensitive talks with Washington on its nuclear program.
Pakistan is nuclear-armed and fields a far more sophisticated military than Afghanistan’s. But the Taliban, hardened by decades of insurgent warfare against U.S.-led forces before retaking Kabul, are adept at guerrilla tactics that could draw out the confrontation.
Domestic security tightened in Pakistan’s most populous province, Punjab, where authorities said they were on high alert for militant attacks and had launched operations that took 90 Afghan nationals to holding centers for deportation.
Clashes along the border last October killed dozens of soldiers on both sides before talks brokered by Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia paused the fighting. The latest strikes—centered on Kabul and Kandahar, the Taliban’s power base—signal a deeper break from past patterns, when Islamabad largely targeted militants it accused the Taliban of harboring, rather than hitting Taliban military infrastructure directly.
With competing casualty claims and the rhetoric hardening, the next 48 hours will indicate whether mediation can pull Pakistan and the Taliban back from a potentially protracted and destabilizing border war.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
