Islamabad, Pakistan – Within the weeks earlier than the Pakistani army carried out air raids inside Afghanistan over the weekend, violence had been unrelenting.
On February 6, a suicide bomber detonated explosives throughout Friday prayers at a Shia mosque within the capital, Islamabad, killing at the least 36 worshippers and wounding 170 others.
Beneficial Tales
record of 4 gadgetsfinish of record
Days later, an explosives-laden car rammed a safety submit in Bajaur within the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, killing 11 troopers and a toddler. The attacker, in response to Pakistani authorities, was later recognized as an Afghan nationwide.
After the Bajaur assault, Pakistan’s Ministry of International Affairs issued a demarche to the Taliban authorities on February 19, summoning the Afghan deputy head of mission in Islamabad.
However two days later, within the early hours of Saturday, one other suicide bomber struck a safety convoy in Bannu, additionally in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, killing two troopers, together with a lieutenant colonel.
Pakistan’s endurance appeared to have run out, and early on Sunday, the army struck again, focusing on what it described as “camps and hideouts” in Afghan border areas.
In keeping with Pakistani authorities, air raids in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar and Paktika provinces focused sanctuaries of Pakistan Taliban, or TTP, and its associates, killing at the least “80 militants in intelligence-based air strikes alongside the Pakistan-Afghanistan border focusing on seven camps”.
Kabul has rejected these claims. The Afghan Ministry of Defence stated the strikes hit a non secular college and residential properties, killing and wounding dozens, together with girls and kids. Afghan sources advised Al Jazeera that at the least 17 folks had been killed in Nangarhar alone. Kabul pledged a “measured and applicable response”.
Afterward Sunday, India entered the image, condemning the Pakistani army motion and throwing in its help for Afghanistan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
“India strongly condemns Pakistan’s airstrikes on Afghan territory which have resulted in civilian casualties, together with girls and kids, through the holy month of Ramadan,” Ministry of Exterior Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal stated.
“It’s one other try by Pakistan to externalise its inside failures,” he stated.
In some ways, the assertion from New Delhi underscored the unease in Islamabad over India’s rising engagement with Taliban-ruled Afghanistan — an rising partnership between two nations that Pakistan has repeatedly blamed in current months for its home safety turmoil.
Breaking level
Pakistan’s Ministry of Data and Broadcasting, in an announcement issued on Sunday, stated it had “conclusive proof” that the current assaults on its soil had been carried out by fighters and suicide bombers performing on the “behest of their Afghanistan-based management and handlers.”
It stated Islamabad had repeatedly urged Kabul to take verifiable steps to stop armed teams from utilizing Afghan soil, however that no substantive motion had adopted.
“Pakistan has all the time strived to take care of peace and stability within the area,” the assertion learn, “however the security and safety of Pakistani residents stay its high precedence.”
Pakistan’s assault shattered a fragile ceasefire brokered by Qatar and Turkiye after talks in October and November, following earlier rounds of lethal border clashes. The discussions final 12 months had failed to supply a proper peace settlement, and calm alongside the frontier remained tenuous.
The Taliban authorities in Afghanistan has repeatedly rejected allegations that it’s supporting armed teams that assault Pakistan.
However way back to October final 12 months, the Pakistan army’s spokesperson, Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, had warned that Islamabad’s endurance was carrying skinny.
“Afghanistan is getting used as a base of operations in opposition to Pakistan, and there may be proof and proof of that. The mandatory measures that must be taken to guard the lives and property of the folks of Pakistan can be taken and can proceed to be taken,” he stated throughout a press briefing, with out presenting proof publicly.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, after a suicide bombing outdoors a district court docket in Islamabad in November, had additionally careworn the necessity for cooperation from Kabul.
“Afghanistan should perceive that lasting peace can solely be realised by reining in TTP and different terrorist teams working from Afghan territory,” he stated.
‘Left between dangerous and worse choices’
The TTP, which emerged in 2007, is distinct from the Taliban in Afghanistan however shares deep ideological, social and linguistic ties with the group. Pakistan accuses the Taliban of offering sanctuary to the TTP on Afghan soil, a cost Kabul denies.
Abdul Basit, a scholar on the Worldwide Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Analysis at Singapore’s S Rajaratnam Faculty of Worldwide Research, stated Pakistan’s assault confirms the collapse of the momentary ceasefire that adopted the talks late final 12 months.
Basit questioned the logic behind Pakistan’s bombings.
“The extra Pakistan will strike in Afghanistan, the extra Kabul and TTP will come nearer,” he advised Al Jazeera.
On the similar time, Basit stated, he understood Pakistan’s dilemma. “They should retaliate after shedding so many safety personnel,” he stated, describing Pakistan as being “left between dangerous and worse choices”.
The losses for Pakistan in current months have been steep. Final 12 months was among the many deadliest in practically a decade, with 699 assaults recorded nationwide, a 34 % improve from the earlier 12 months, in response to the Pak Institute for Peace Research.
Its 2025 safety report stated at the least 1,034 folks had been killed within the renewed wave of violence, marking a 21 % rise in “terrorism-related fatalities”. “As well as, 1,366 folks had been injured over the course of the 12 months, underscoring the rising human value of terrorism,” the report stated.
Cross-border air raids will not be new. An identical operation in December 2024 killed at the least 46 folks, most of them civilians. That episode prompted sharp warnings from Kabul, however assaults on Pakistani soil — blamed by Islamabad on the TTP — continued.
Some consultants stated Pakistan’s technique wanted to contain greater than army strain on the Taliban.
Fahad Nabeel, who heads the Islamabad-based analysis consultancy Geopolitical Insights, stated Pakistan should additionally work to construct goodwill amongst Afghans.
“Reopening the border and resuming bilateral commerce are two potential measures that Pakistan can undertake. Pakistan additionally must share actionable intelligence with allied nations like China, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkiye to extend strain on the Afghan Taliban to behave in opposition to anti-Pakistan militant teams,” he advised Al Jazeera.
The India query
An intriguing dimension of the disaster has been not solely who Pakistan focused, however who responded.
India, Pakistan’s nuclear-armed rival, condemned the air raids and highlighted civilian casualties in Afghanistan, whereas remaining silent on the assaults inside Pakistan that preceded them.
For officers in Islamabad, New Delhi’s assertion strengthened a notion that India and the Taliban authorities are edging nearer in ways in which complicate Pakistan’s safety calculus.
That shift has gathered tempo over the previous 12 months. Afghan International Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi’s six-day go to to India final October marked the primary journey by a senior Taliban official because the group returned to energy in 2021. India reopened its embassy in Kabul throughout the identical interval.
When a magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck northern Afghanistan weeks later, India was among the many first to ship assist and later gifted ambulances to Kabul, gestures intently watched in Islamabad.
Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif claimed in October that India had “penetrated” the Taliban management and advised that Kabul’s rising ties with New Delhi made it much less prepared to chop ties with the TTP. He supplied no public proof to again his claims.
Basit stated whereas Pakistan’s assaults on Afghanistan would quantity to “India’s achieve” — drawing the Taliban and New Delhi nearer, with a shared enemy in Islamabad — India confronted limitations imposed by geography. “It may present humanitarian help to Afghanistan, however nothing greater than that,” he stated.
Nonetheless, Nabeel argued, Pakistani policymakers want readability on the best way to deal with armed teams working from Afghan soil.
“Pakistan can not afford to maintain each borders [with Afghanistan and India] engaged at a time when the prospects of army confrontation between the US and Iran are rising with every passing day,” he stated, referring to rising tensions within the Center East.
Narrowing choices
Pakistan’s jap border with India has remained tense because the two nations had a four-day army confrontation in Could final 12 months after an assault on vacationers in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir, through which 26 folks had been killed. India blamed Pakistan, which denied any position.
To the west, the Taliban authorities reveals little signal of performing decisively in opposition to the TTP, say Pakistani officers. At house, a surge in assaults, together with in massive cities, has intensified public strain on the army to reply forcefully.
Sunday’s air raids had been meant to undertaking energy to Kabul, say consultants. Whether or not they quantity to a coherent long-term technique is much less clear, particularly because the Taliban has pledged retaliation.
However Basit identified that the Taliban management additionally must undertaking energy domestically and reply to entrenched “anti-Pakistan sentiment” amongst Afghans.
“Kabul is nicely inside its rights to reply, contemplating it’s a matter of their very own sovereignty, but additionally as a result of by doing that, the general public will rally behind them and improve their home legitimacy, as we noticed within the final cycle of assaults,” he stated.
