“Our persistence has run out”, Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif wrote in a social media put up on Friday (February 27, 2026). “Now it’s open battle between us and also you.” Mr. Asif’s remarks got here after Pakistan carried out air strikes on Kabul and Kandahar, Afghanistan’s two largest cities, and Paktia, a border province. The strikes have been launched hours after Afghan troops attacked Pakistani border posts. These assaults, in flip, adopted earlier Pakistani strikes this week, which Islamabad claimed have been carried out in retaliation for current terror assaults inside its territory.
These incidents, together with the allegations and counter-allegations, underscore the more and more flamable nature of relations between Islamabad and Kabul. Till just a few years in the past, Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban have been shut allies. The Taliban’s high management was based mostly in Pakistan’s Quetta whereas it fought U.S. troops and the earlier Afghan authorities. However 4 years after the Taliban captured Kabul and established its Islamic Emirate, the previous allies have change into bitter adversaries. What went fallacious between Islamabad and the Taliban?
When the Taliban have been an rebel motion, they relied on Pakistan’s assist to maintain their battle in opposition to U.S. forces and the U.S.-backed Islamic Republic authorities in Kabul. Pakistan, cautious of India’s rising affect in Afghanistan, seen the Taliban, a long-time ally, as a automobile for extending its affect within the neighbourhood. When the Taliban captured Kabul in August 2021, then Prime Minister Imran Khan famously declared that Afghans had lastly “damaged the shackles of slavery”. Pakistan believed the Taliban’s return to energy would restore its “strategic depth” in South-Central Asia. However the Taliban’s rise reshaped regional dynamics, defying Pakistan’s calculations. Islamabad-Rawalpindi quickly discovered itself confronting three distinct challenges.
Folks learn morning newspapers masking the headline story concerning the in a single day cross border combating between Pakistan and Afghan forces, at a stall in Peshawar, Pakistan, on Friday, Feb. 27, 2026.
| Photograph Credit score:
AP
Border clashes
The primary is the Durand Line, the two,640-km border established between British India and Afghanistan in 1893 and inherited by Pakistan. No Afghan authorities for the reason that collapse of the monarchy in 1973 has accepted the road, which cuts by the tribal heartland of the area. The Taliban, too, have refused to recognise the boundary drawn by Mortimer Durand, a British diplomat, and Abdur Rahman Khan, the Emir of Afghanistan.
The border dispute was not a difficulty between the Taliban and Pakistan when the previous was an insurgency. However when the Taliban turned the state, the long-standing inter-state dispute between Afghanistan and Pakistan moved to the centre of bilateral relations. If Pakistan anticipated the Taliban to behave as a consumer associate, it miscalculated. The Taliban sought to say their autonomy, resulting in rising tensions. Border skirmishes turned frequent, at instances, reminiscent of in October 2025, escalating into severe clashes.
Taliban troopers carry a field containing weapons, following exchanges of fireplace between Pakistan and Afghanistan forces, close to Torkham border in Afghanistan, on February 27, 2026.
| Photograph Credit score:
Reuters
The opposite Taliban
The second is the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also referred to as the Pakistani Taliban. The TTP and the Afghan Taliban are organisationally completely different however ideologically aligned. The Afghan Taliban needed to expel U.S. troops from Afghanistan, defeat the Islamic Republic’s safety forces, seize Kabul and switch the nation into an Islamic Emirate. They achieved their aims in August 2021. The TTP, for its half, goals to copy the Afghan Taliban’s success, at the least in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
Whereas the Pakistani army supported the Afghan Taliban, it has lengthy seen the TTP as a severe safety risk. The Afghan Taliban’s return to energy in 2021 inevitably strengthened the TTP. Initially, the Afghan Taliban brokered a truce between the Pakistani army and the TTP, however the ceasefire collapsed in 2022 and hostilities resumed. Within the years since, the safety scenario in Pakistan’s border areas has deteriorated sharply, with assaults occurring virtually day by day. In line with the Pak Institute for Peace Research, at the least 400 folks, most of them safety personnel, have been killed in TTP assaults throughout Pakistan final yr, one of the violent years in a decade. Pakistan accuses the Afghan Taliban of harbouring the TTP, an allegation Kabul denies. Islamabad says it should perform strikes inside Afghanistan focusing on TTP camps. However Kabul says such assaults violate Afghanistan’s sovereignty and has warned of retaliation, perpetuating a cycle of violence.
The India issue
The third problem Pakistan faces is the Taliban’s warming ties with India. New Delhi had extremely strained ties with the Taliban when the group was in energy within the late Nineties. However the Taliban 2.0 have proven higher flexibility in bettering ties with India and New Delhi has reciprocated. Final yr, India hosted the Taliban Overseas Minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi. Final month, the Taliban appointed an envoy to steer their diplomatic mission in Delhi. Although India has not formally recognised the Taliban, it’s clear that engagement between Delhi and Kabul is deepening. This, too, has sophisticated Pakistan’s strategic calculations. On Friday, Mr. Asif, Pakistan’s Defence Minister, mentioned the Taliban had change into a “proxy for India”.
Pakistan supported the Taliban within the hope of securing strategic depth. As an alternative, it now finds itself coping with a Taliban management which it thinks poses safety, cross-border and geopolitical challenges to Islamabad-Rawalpindi.
Printed – February 27, 2026 06:11 pm IST
