Intense clashes broke out along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border on Saturday night after an Afghan Taliban attack on Pakistani military posts led to a heavy exchange of fire and reportedly left dozens of soldiers dead.
According to officials, Afghan troops opened fire on Pakistani army posts along the northwest border with Pakistan on Saturday night and captured several Pakistani army posts. The attacks came after the Taliban regime in Afghanistan accused Pakistan of carrying out airstrikes on Afghan territory, including in the capital Kabul, earlier this week.
On Sunday, Pakistan responded with retaliatory strikes, gunfire and ground attacks on Afghan Taliban posts along the border.
In a statement, the media wing of the Pakistani armed forces said that 23 soldiers were killed and another 29 injured in the attacks. They claimed that 200 “Taliban and affiliated terrorists” on the Afghan side were killed in their retaliatory attacks and that terrorist training camps were dismantled.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid had previously stated that Taliban forces killed 58 Pakistani soldiers in the attacks, while only nine on the Taliban side were killed.
The clashes mark a further decline in relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which have become increasingly hostile over allegations that Afghanistan is providing a safe haven for Islamist militants carrying out a growing number of deadly attacks on Pakistani soil.
On Sunday morning, the Taliban government’s Ministry of Defense said its forces had conducted “successful and retaliatory operations” along the border. “If the opposing side violates Afghanistan’s territorial integrity again, our armed forces are fully prepared to defend the country’s borders and will provide a strong response,” the ministry said.
Pakistan’s media wing accused the Afghan Taliban of launching attacks to “facilitate terrorism”.
“Exercising the right of self-defense, the alert Pakistan Armed Forces repelled the attack decisively along the entire border and inflicted heavy casualties on the Taliban Forces,” the statement said.
“We will not tolerate the treacherous use of Afghan soil for terrorism against Pakistan… the state of Pakistan will not rest until the threat of terrorism emanating from Afghanistan is completely eliminated.”
The cross-border attacks came after two explosions were reported in the Afghan capital and another in southeastern Afghanistan on Thursday. The Taliban-run Ministry of Defense later accused Pakistan of “violating its sovereignty” in connection with the attacks. Pakistan neither denied nor confirmed the attack in Kabul, saying only that it carried out “a series of retaliatory operations”.
Analysts said recent days showed how volatile the situation along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border has become. The two countries share a rugged and mountainous border of almost 2,600 km (1,600 miles), known as the Durand Line, which still remains contested by Afghanistan.
Since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in 2021, the Pakistani government has accused the Afghan Taliban of harboring the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an Islamic militant group that is behind a deadly wave of insurgent attacks in Pakistan’s border region. from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Thousands of attacks by TTP militants – most targeting Pakistani police, paramilitaries and army – have been carried out over the past four years, leaving more than 2,500 people dead. Islambad has become increasingly impatient with Kabul, publicly calling on the Afghan Taliban to stop harboring TTP militants, accusing them of turning a blind eye to training camps and providing funding and weapons to TTP fighters carrying out attacks on Pakistani soil, allegations supported by UN findings.
Imtiaz Gul, an Islamabad-based security analyst, said “Pakistan’s patience with Kabul was running out” as TTP attacks continued to increase. Earlier this week, at least three senior army officers, including 20 soldiers, were killed in attacks by the Pakistani Taliban. According to armed conflict location and event data, there have been more than 600 TTP attacks so far this year, the highest number in a decade.
Gul described the clashes as a “logical conclusion to the tensions that had been growing between the two countries, especially following the Afghan regime’s continued refusal to take demonstrable conclusive action against the TTP, which is leading terrorist attacks in Pakistan.”
Speaking at a press conference in Delhi, where he was on an official visit to India this week, Afghan Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi denied that Afghanistan was harboring TTP fighters. “There is no safe haven for the TTP in Afghanistan,” he said.
Muttaqi said the situation along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border was now “under control” and that allies Qatar and Saudi Arabia had been in touch to “express that the war should stop.”
“Afghanistan has the right to keep its territory and borders secure and therefore retaliated for the violation,” he said. “We achieved the objective of our retaliation mission… so, on our side, we stopped.”
Michael Kugelman, a South Asia analyst based in Washington DC, described the border situation as “precarious”. He emphasized that while the cash-strapped Taliban in Afghanistan “do not have the capacity to combat the Pakistani military head-on,” he warned that the attacks could further fuel the cross-border militant insurgency in Pakistan.
“The risk is that its recent attacks in Afghanistan will galvanize the TTP to carry out reprisals, which could provoke new and perhaps more intense Pakistani operations in Afghanistan,” Kugelman said. “And then the cycle can start again. There are no winners or easy long-term solutions here.”
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