Afghanistan-Pakistan border clashes continue amid reported Pakistani outreach to anti-Taliban groups

Taliban and Pakistani forces have clashed at least three times along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border since October 19, amid reports that Pakistani military and intelligence officials have met with Afghan anti-Taliban resistance groups. On October 27, Taliban and Pakistani forces exchanged fire along the border between Afghanistan’s southeastern Paktika province and the Lower South Waziristan district in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Residents told Afghan media that the fighting involved heavy weapons. Pakistani authorities reported that one civilian was killed and five others were wounded when a mortar struck a family’s home. According to Afghan media, Taliban forces were attempting to reoccupy positions they had abandoned several months earlier during previous Pakistani attacks, prompting Pakistani forces to open fire. The Taliban’s Ministry of Defense said in a post on X that Pakistani drones had struck security facilities in Paktika. It claimed Taliban forces retaliated by attacking nearby Pakistani military positions, killing and wounding an unspecified number of Pakistani soldiers without suffering any casualties. Pakistan dismissed the Taliban’s account as a “fabrication of lies” and accused Taliban forces of initiating the exchange by firing on Pakistani border posts. “Let the Afghan Taliban regime have no illusions: Pakistan will never tolerate attacks on its people or violations of its sovereignty,” Faisal Karim Kundi, the governor of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said in a post on X. On October 28, Afghan media reported intermittent fighting at the Torkham border crossing, which connects Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. A child and an aid organization employee were reportedly wounded. The latest clashes followed fighting on October 19, when local sources told Afghan news outlets that residents had fled their homes after Taliban and Pakistani forces exchanged heavy weapons fire for several hours along the Paktika–Khyber Pakhtunkhwa border. The two sides clashed again in the same area eight days later. Relations between the former allies have deteriorated since the Taliban’s return to power. Pakistan accuses the Taliban of providing sanctuary to the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan (TTP) and other Islamist groups. The latest round of fighting began on September 18, when Ittehad ul Mujahideen Pakistan, a militant alliance with roots in the TTP, claimed responsibility for a complex suicide attack in northwestern Pakistan that killed 31 people. Despite intermittent lulls, tensions have remained high since Pakistani Defense Minister Khwaja Muhammad Asif declared “open war” following border clashes in late February. Separately, The New York Times reported on October 24 that Pakistani military and intelligence officials had met with anti-Taliban resistance groups in recent months, according to a Pakistani intelligence official and a senior member of the resistance. Pakistan denied the reports. The reported outreach presents a dilemma for the resistance, as explored in a recent analysis by FDD’s Long War Journal. The fighting and border closures have sharply curtailed trade. Figures released by the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan showed that bilateral trade had fallen 95 percent in fiscal year 2026 compared with the previous year. “We no longer have trade with Pakistan,” said Mohammad Younus Mohamad, vice president of the Afghan chapter of the Pakistan-Afghanistan Joint Chamber of Commerce and Industry. “Our transit via Pakistan and Pakistan’s transit via Afghanistan to Central Asia have come to a complete halt.” Border crossings between the two countries have remained mostly closed for more than a year, although limited numbers of Afghans have been permitted to cross. Will Selber is a retired US CENTCOM foreign area officer with over 4 years in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is the owner of Grumpy Combat Veteran on Substack.