While the US is busy in Iran, Pakistan is now at war with Afghanistan since a few days.
Explosions have been heard in the Afghan capital, Kabul, with Taliban forces saying they opened fire at Pakistani aircraft, as the conflict stretched into its fourth consecutive day.
Afghanistan’s Taliban government said its forces deployed anti-aircraft and missile defence systems against Pakistani jets that entered Afghan airspace early on Sunday morning. This included thwarting an attempted Pakistani strike on Bagram, the former US military base north of Kabul that US President Donald Trump expressed interest in reoccupying last year.
Pakistan has not responded to the claim.
Islamabad has declared that the two countries are in “open war”, and on Sunday, its forces were reported to still be holding a 32-square-kilometre (12-mile) area of Afghan territory in the southern Zhob sector, according to two Pakistani security officials.
Afghanistan’s deputy government spokesman, Hamdullah Fitrat, said Pakistani strikes had killed 55 civilians across multiple provinces since fighting intensified on Thursday, according to the Anadolu news agency.
Despite the Taliban signalling an openness to negotiations, Pakistan has rejected dialogue. “There won’t be any talks. There’s no dialogue. There’s no negotiation,” said Mosharraf Zaidi, the Pakistani prime minister’s spokesman for foreign media, insisting that Islamabad’s sole demand was an end to what it calls Afghanistan-based “terrorism”.
The roots of the conflict lie in a long-running and bitter dispute over Pakistan Taliban, known by the acronym TTP, an armed group that Pakistan accuses Kabul of harbouring.
The TTP has dramatically intensified its campaign inside Pakistan, with the last year being the country’s most violent in nearly a decade. Deaths surged by 75 percent from 2024 to 3,413, and overall violent incidents rose by 29 percent, according to the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies, an Islamabad-based think tank.
On February 21, a Pakistani air strike targeted what it called TTP hideouts in the Nangarhar and Paktika provinces, along Pakistan’s border. The United Nations said it had credible reports that 13 Afghan civilians were killed.
Kabul calls Pakistan’s actions unprovoked and denies that Afghan soil is used to threaten any neighbouring country.
Militarily, the two sides are deeply mismatched, as Pakistan has vastly superior conventional firepower, aircraft, tanks, and advanced defence systems.
But the Afghan Taliban, hardened by more than two decades of rebel warfare against US-led NATO forces, has deployed drones to strike Pakistani military camps, a cheap and effective tool that is reshaping the battlefield.
Kabul reports a thwarted strike on Bagram air base as international calls for a ceasefire go unheeded.
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