Pakistan’s Punitive Gamble in Afghanistan: An Open War With No End in Sight

In the early hours of September 24, Pakistan carried out air and drone strikes on ten locations inside Afghanistan. Subsequently, Afghan media identified Kandahar – where the Taliban’s supreme leader (Amir-al-Mu’minin) Hibatullah Akhundzada is based – as well as Khost and Paktia as the provinces targeted. A few hours later, Pakistani Information Minister Attaullah Tarar posted on social media that the strikes were “deliberate, precise, calibrated and proportionate” and were “strictly limited to identified military objectives directly linked to the attempted attacks against Pakistan.” “Attempted attacks” was a reference to earlier Pakistani claims that it had shot down ten rudimentary drones launched from inside Afghanistan that entered Pakistani territory with a “soft kill” approach. Two days earlier, on September 21, Pakistani air strikes on Kunar and Paktika provinces killed three civilians – a man, a woman, and a girl – in Kunar’s Nurgal district. Islamabad claimed to have killed 28 militants in the attack. The civilian casualties, which were confirmed by UNAMA, saw Afghan protesters hitting the streets in Kabul and elsewhere. This Pakistani strike was in response to an attack on a police compound in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Kohat, killing at least 16 police officers on September 18. On that day a vehicle-borne explosive device breached the police compound during Friday prayers. This was followed by an armed assault by militants. The attack was claimed by the Ittihadul Mujahideen Pakistan (IMP), an alliance led by the Hafiz Gul Bahadar (HGB) group, which shares close linkages with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Pakistani authorities identified one of the attackers as an Afghan national. Pakistan has carried out air and drone strikes inside Afghanistan on at least 15 occasions between October 2025 and September 2026. Private estimates suggest that more than 1,100 civilians have been killed or injured by cross-border violence in Afghanistan this year. An attack on a drug rehabilitation center in Kabul in May killed 269 people, leading to calls for the attack to be investigated as a war crime. Inside Pakistan, the death toll of civilians and security forces in terrorism-related incidents in 2026 so far is close to 1,700. Of these, 545 have taken place in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where the TTP and the IMP operate. Pakistani claims that Afghan soil is being used by the TTP and the IMP are supported by periodic reports from the U.N. monitoring committee, including one released in August 2026. The report unequivocally said that the Afghan Taliban “continued their support” to the TTP. The Afghan Taliban has responded to such assertions by repeated public denials. Behind the scenes, however, the Afghan Taliban may have tried to restrain the TTP. The U.N. report mentioned that the Afghan Taliban authorities have “relocated approximately 2,000 TTP fighters and families from the Pakistani border to further inside Afghanistan.” Akhundzada has reportedly “warned the TTP leadership through back‑channel communications to halt attacks targeting Pakistan or risk losing the Taliban’s support,” it added. It is unclear if any attempt was made to reign in the IMP as well. While efforts to control the TTP may not have worked completely, according to data by ACLED, “HGB and IMP’s activities have less than halved since the latest outbreak of hostilities between Afghanistan and Pakistan in late February, compared with the immediately preceding period.” On February 27, Pakistan launched Operation Ghazab lil-Haq (Righteous Fury) against the Taliban in Afghanistan, marking the first such attack on its former ally and protégé. On that occasion, “unprovoked firing” from across the border by the Taliban was cited as the reason. Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Asif declared, “Now it is open war between us.” Given the levels of violence the TTP and the IMP continued to perpetrate inside Pakistan, the country is facing a classic case of strategic blowback. More importantly, the sense of impunity with which Islamabad has repeatedly carried out its attacks in Afghanistan, despite their low efficacy, indicates serious lacunae in Pakistan’s counterterrorism strategy. Most of these attacks have led to angry statements by Taliban officials, vows of retaliation, and incidents of cross-border firing by Taliban soldiers but little else. In addition to reining in the TTP and IMP, Pakistan seems to be pursuing a larger strategic objective of finding its lost leverage in Kabul. In Islamabad’s view, its former ally has gone rogue and demonstrating coercive power, along with providing support to the anti-Taliban resistance fronts, is the only path forward. A weak and client state in Afghanistan is the end state Pakistani establishment has pursued for decades. During the days of the previous Afghan Republic, the HGB largely spared the Pakistani state and instead focused its fight on American and NATO forces in Afghanistan. Post-August 2021, backed by al-Qaida, the HGB has grown to be a prominent face of jihadist insurgency against Islamabad. It is numerically smaller than the TTP, but that hasn’t stopped it from carrying out some of the more complex attacks on security installations in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Therefore, eliminating the IMP threat, if not the far larger TTP, will potentially address the blowback Islamabad is currently receiving for its past policies. Similarly, repeated attacks including some directed at the Taliban regime itself, could possibly lead to internal ruptures within the faction-ridden Islamic Emirate and embolden the small pro-Pakistan elements within it. That, however, is much easier said than done. Despite reports of factionalism and internal differences within the Kandahar (Rahbari shura or the leadership council) and Kabul (administrative) shuras of the Taliban, the Rahbari shura functioning under the strict Islamic edicts of the Supreme leader, still retains control and uncontested legitimacy. Moreover, each attack by Pakistan so far has further raised anti-Pakistan sentiment inside Afghanistan. It could embolden the Afghan Taliban as well, who have little incentive to accede to Islamabad’s demands. The ethno-nationalist Taliban regime with strong Pushtun identity across the contested Durand Line could raise its head of Pushtun nationalism once again. The Taliban seem to have learnt from their former sponsor’s playbook the art of cultivating strategic assets and using them as leverage. Attempting to bomb them into submission could be a myopic and counterproductive strategy if there are any lessons learned from the last two decades of American intervention in Afghanistan.