On 26 February Afghan troops launched major attacks on a dozen Pakistani border posts, which, according to the Afghan government, was in retaliation for Pakistan airstrikes on Pakistan Taliban, known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), hideouts in Afghanistan earlier in February. Islamabad responded by bombing 22 cities and military targets, in Kabul and Kandahar, and Paktia, Nangarhar, Khost and Paktika provinces. According to the official spokesman for Pakistan’s armed forces, Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, 274 Taliban personnel have been killed and more than 400 injured, seventy-three Afghan posts along the Pak-Afghan border have been destroyed and eighteen captured.
The Pakistan defence minister, Khwaja Asif, declared that now the two countries were in an “open war”. While Pakistan has previously launched significant airstrikes against TTP targets in Afghanistan, notably in December 2024, this latest military operation is a major deterioration in an already tense relationship between the two countries which has been simmering since the Taliban reclaimed power in August 2021.
Notwithstanding the general belief in political and military circles in Pakistan—the Taliban’s major supporter since 1996—that the Taliban’s return to power was going to be good news for Pakistan, not everyone, including this author, agreed with this assessment. The TTP is a Pashtun-dominated insurgency group of between 2,500 to 6000 fighters. Founded in 2007, it wants to impose Sharia law throughout Pakistan and has been terrorising Pakistanis for almost 20 years, killing thousands. TTP was given a real fillip with the Taliban’s return to power. According to the Global Terrorism Index 2025 report, the TTP emerged as the fastest-growing terrorist group in the world, with a 90% increase in deaths attributed to its attacks. And Pakistan was the principal target of these acts, giving it the second highest global score on the composite terrorism index. In 2020, the year before the Taliban came back to power, there were three fatalities in Pakistan due to TTP terrorist acts. This has progressively increased over the past 5 years, reaching 257 in 2025.
The Taliban, which was effectively the midwife to the TTP’s creation, has organisational, tribal, and ideological links with the TTP. And, importantly, TTP fighters participated with the Taliban in fighting Coalition and Afghan forces in Afghanistan for well over a decade. So, it is no surprise, despite the Pakistan government’s repeated demands since 2021 that the Taliban stop the TTP from launching terrorist attacks into Pakistan, that Kabul has refused to break with the TTP. Quite the opposite, according to the UN Security Council, the Taliban has been providing weapons and drones to the Pakistan Taliban.
The previous serious military clash between the two countries had been in October 2025 and had ended with a ceasefire brokered by Türkiye and Qatar. But despite subsequent negotiations the two countries were unable to agree on a peace agreement. Significantly, Pakistan’s air force targeted Taliban military facilities in Kabul in the latest assaults, indicating that Pakistan will no longer be as tolerant towards the Taliban and its refusal to expel the TTP from its territory.
In addition to its military might, Pakistan has other tools in its state kit. It could further tighten movement across its 2600-kilometre border. The critical border controls at Torkham and Chaman provide about 40% of Afghanistan’s customs revenue. By imposing further tariffs on top of the existing 10% and greater import restrictions it would make it more costly economically for the Taliban to continue to support the TTP. Pakistan could increase the number of Afghan refugees it forcefully repatriates to Afghanistan, creating more economic hardship for the country. In 2025 alone, 930,000 Afghans were repatriated, 67 percent of them forcefully.
But there is a limit to how much pressure the Taliban can put on the TTP, were it inclined to do so, without endangering its own survival. Many of its members, who believe that the Taliban is too soft, have defected to the Islamic State in Khurasan Province (ISKP). The ISKP has been ruthless in pursuing Taiban leaders, with many of them assassinated by the ISKP. The membership of the ISKP is about 4000 to 6000 fighters, operating mainly in Afghanistan but also in Pakistan. Undoubtedly, if the Taliban did agree to get tough with the TTP, many of its members would probably defect to the ISKP in response to what they would consider a betrayal of their cause.
There does not appear to be any determined effort by third countries to try to initiate peace talks between the two countries. Saudi Arabia and Qatar did offer to help mediate a ceasefire, but as these two countries were the targets of Iranian retaliation in its war with Israel and the US, their focus is now on their home front. However, as with the previous attempt at mediation in 2025, the likelihood of finding a lasting solution to this latest clash between these two countries is remote, at best. Bilateral relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have been difficult since Partition in 1947. Kabul has yet to officially accept the Durand Line, the internationally recognised border between the two countries. Regardless which government has been in power in Kabul, it has consistently argued that the Durand Line is an artificial border which has been imposed on Afghanistan by the former British colonial rulers and unnecessarily separates Pashtun tribes from one another. The Pashtun represent forty percent of Afghanistan and twenty percent of Pakistan. It is this shared ethnic group which complicates further the search for a peaceful solution.
But the risk is that the longer these latest clashes continue, the greater the likelihood of an unwanted escalation in a region that must deal with the unpredictable fallout of the on-going military clashes between Iran and the combined Israeli and American forces.
Dr Claude Rakisits is a Canberra-based geo-strategic analyst who has been following South Asian issues for over 40 years. He’s also the President of the ACT Branch of the Australian Institute of International Affairs (AIIA).
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