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Tom Hussain

Pakistan and Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities are locked in a widening tit-for-tat confrontation that neither side seems willing to defuse, analysts said, warning the exchanges risked settling into a prolonged conflict along one of Asia’s most volatile borders.
Islamabad has vowed to keep striking military targets inside Afghanistan until the Taliban takes action against the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and other militant groups Pakistan says operate from Afghan soil.
Pakistani warplanes and drones struck command-and-control centres, logistical infrastructure and munitions dumps in eastern Afghanistan as dawn broke on Saturday, a day after the military described the fighting as “open war” between the former allies.
Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, the army’s chief spokesman, had warned the campaign would not end until “our objectives are met”.
Pakistani ground forces, supported by artillery and tanks, have been destroying Afghan military posts in border areas Islamabad says are vulnerable to infiltration by the TTP and other insurgent groups operating from Afghanistan since the Taliban’s 2021 takeover.


According to a social media post by Pakistani Information Minister Attaullah Tarar, air strikes against 37 sites inside Afghanistan were carried out up to 9am on Saturday, while 104 Afghan Taliban posts had been destroyed and 22 others captured.
Kabul has responded with both threats and overtures.
Afghanistan’s Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani warned Pakistan that it could face a “national uprising and jihad” unless it agreed to a ceasefire.
But speaking at a mosque in Khost, Haqqani also said “the door to negotiation remains open” and called on “regional and global actors” to facilitate talks.
According to the Pakistani military, Afghan ground forces have carried out guerrilla-style hit-and-run attacks on more than 50 Pakistani posts along the 1,000-kilometre border, reaching as far north as the Wakhan Corridor, which borders China’s Xinjiang region and Tajikistan.
The Taliban also launched several symbolic attacks deep into northwestern Pakistan, using quadcopters rigged with explosives.
A few hours later, Pakistan’s military spokesman issued an ultimatum to Kabul, saying it faced a “clear choice” between Pakistan and terrorist groups based on its soil.
Islamabad received diplomatic backing from the US and European Union later on Friday.
Asked by a reporter in Washington if he would intervene, President Trump expressed support for Pakistan, saying its leadership was “doing terrifically well”.
US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Allison Hooker later called Pakistani Foreign Secretary Amna Baloch to express “condolences for lives lost” in the recent conflict between Pakistan and the Taliban.
In a social media post, Hooker said Washington would continue to monitor the situation closely and voiced “support for Pakistan’s right to defend itself against Taliban attacks”.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas demanded that “⁠Afghan territory ‌must not ‌be used ‌to threaten or ‌attack other countries”, while calling on Afghanistan and Pakistan to de-escalate and ‌engage ‌in dialogue.
In a statement, Kallas also called on Kabul to “take effective action against all terrorist groups operating in or from Afghanistan”.

Escalation by design
For now, analysts see neither a decisive escalation nor a quick diplomatic breakthrough.
According to Afghanistan- and Pakistan-focused security analyst Adam Weinstein, Pakistan was likely to continue attacks on military targets and government buildings in Afghanistan, but would “stop short of assassinating senior Taliban figures”.
Pakistan’s campaign was “best understood as part of a managed escalation designed to signal resolve without crossing red lines that would make de-escalation impossible”, said Weinstein, who is the deputy director of the Middle East programme at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a Washington think tank.
He said the Taliban’s senior leadership in Kandahar “does not want to appear weak in the face of Pakistani pressure, especially since anti-Pakistan sentiment is strong in Afghanistan”.
Its reclusive emir, Haibatullah Akhundzada, and his inner circle were willing to pay “almost any price to maintain the principles of their movement, including not abandoning the Pakistani Taliban”, Weinstein said.
Not long after Pakistan’s ultimatum to Kabul, the TTP and other factions publicly ordered their commanders to ramp up attacks inside Pakistan “in defence of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan”.
Three police posts in Peshawar, the administrative headquarters of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, came under fire soon after, while residents of Bannu, a town located 190 kilometres to the south, were ordered by the authorities to remain indoors because of the threat of terrorist attacks.
Abdul Basit, senior associate fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies’ International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore, said this represented a Taliban regime move to “escalate the conflict at the sub-conventional level through its proxies”.
But without an air force and lacking conventional military strength, “there is nothing substantive that the Taliban [regime] can do”, he said.
Pakistan, on the other hand, could sustain its military campaign and would continue to escalate “for as long as the Taliban does not relent … [and] gives credible written guarantees” to take action against the TTP.
But Pakistan’s military campaign would not involve any attempt to seize Afghan territory or decapitate the Taliban regime, Basit said.

Similarly, he said, the Taliban – having previously weathered the US-led occupation of Afghanistan for 20 years – would stand its ground because confrontation with Pakistan boosted the authorities’ domestic legitimacy.
In fact, Basit said he did not see either side de-escalating “any time soon” because the Pakistani public, media and political parties were “rallying around the flag” – as they had during the brief air war with India last May – strengthening the legitimacy of the “hybrid” civil-military set-up in Islamabad.
With both governments entrenched in their positions, Basit and Weinstein said offers of mediation by China, the Gulf monarchies and Turkey were unlikely to yield a swift diplomatic resolution.
Basit said backchannel talks via those intermediaries during the latest surge in hostilities – which began with retaliatory Pakistani air strikes on TTP camps in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday – had shown the two sides were still repeating the same talking points as in the last round of negotiations in November.
Weinstein agreed, saying neither side “appears eager for sustained war, but both face domestic and ideological pressures that make meaningful compromise elusive”.
The most likely outcome, he said, was a “prolonged cycle of intense clashes punctuated by mediation”.


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With positions entrenched, mediation efforts by regional powers are unlikely to deliver a swift breakthrough, observers say


With positions entrenched, mediation efforts by regional powers are unlikely to deliver a swift breakthrough, observers say.


Pakistan-Taliban showdown risks becoming a protracted war of attrition

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}With positions entrenched, mediation efforts by regional powers are unlikely to deliver a swift breakthrough, observers say

With positions entrenched, mediation efforts by regional powers are unlikely to deliver a swift breakthrough, observers say