Islamabad, Pakistan – Within the weeks earlier than the Pakistani army carried out air raids inside Afghanistan over the weekend, violence had been unrelenting.
On February 6, a suicide bomber detonated explosives throughout Friday prayers at a Shia mosque within the capital, Islamabad, killing at least 36 worshippers and wounding 170 others.
Beneficial Tales
record of 4 gadgetsfinish of record
Days later, an explosives-laden automobile rammed a safety put up in Bajaur within the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, killing 11 soldiers and a baby. The attacker, based on Pakistani authorities, was later recognized as an Afghan nationwide.
After the Bajaur assault, Pakistan’s Ministry of International Affairs issued a demarche to the Taliban authorities on February 19, summoning the Afghan deputy head of mission in Islamabad.
However two days later, within the early hours of Saturday, one other suicide bomber struck a safety convoy in Bannu, additionally in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, killing two soldiers, together with a lieutenant colonel.
Pakistan’s endurance appeared to have run out, and early on Sunday, the military struck back, concentrating on what it described as “camps and hideouts” in Afghan border areas.
In line with Pakistani authorities, air raids in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar and Paktika provinces focused sanctuaries of Pakistan Taliban, or TTP, and its associates, killing a minimum of “80 militants in intelligence-based air strikes alongside the Pakistan-Afghanistan border concentrating on seven camps”.
Kabul has rejected these claims. The Afghan Ministry of Defence stated the strikes hit a non secular college and residential properties, killing and wounding dozens, together with ladies and youngsters. Afghan sources advised Al Jazeera that a minimum of 17 individuals have been killed in Nangarhar alone. Kabul pledged a “measured and applicable response”.
Afterward Sunday, India entered the image, condemning the Pakistani army motion and throwing in its help for Afghanistan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
“India strongly condemns Pakistan’s airstrikes on Afghan territory which have resulted in civilian casualties, together with ladies and youngsters, throughout the holy month of Ramadan,” Ministry of Exterior Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said.
“It’s one other try by Pakistan to externalise its inner failures,” he stated.
In some ways, the assertion from New Delhi underscored the unease in Islamabad over India’s rising engagement with Taliban-ruled Afghanistan — an rising partnership between two nations that Pakistan has repeatedly blamed in latest months for its home safety turmoil.
Breaking level
Pakistan’s Ministry of Info and Broadcasting, in an announcement issued on Sunday, stated it had “conclusive proof” that the latest assaults on its soil have been carried out by fighters and suicide bombers appearing on the “behest of their Afghanistan-based management and handlers.”
It stated Islamabad had repeatedly urged Kabul to take verifiable steps to forestall armed teams from utilizing Afghan soil, however that no substantive motion had adopted.
“Pakistan has at all times strived to take care of peace and stability within the area,” the statement learn, “however the security and safety of Pakistani residents stay its prime precedence.”
Pakistan’s assault shattered a fragile ceasefire brokered by Qatar and Turkiye after talks in October and November, following earlier rounds of lethal border clashes. The discussions final yr had failed to supply a proper peace settlement, and calm alongside the frontier remained tenuous.
The Taliban authorities in Afghanistan has repeatedly rejected allegations that it’s supporting armed teams that assault Pakistan.
However way back to October final yr, the Pakistan army’s spokesperson, Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, had warned that Islamabad’s endurance was carrying skinny.
“Afghanistan is getting used as a base of operations towards Pakistan, and there’s proof and proof of that. The mandatory measures that ought to be taken to guard the lives and property of the individuals of Pakistan will probably be taken and can proceed to be taken,” he stated throughout a press briefing, with out presenting proof publicly.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, after a suicide bombing exterior a district court docket in Islamabad in November, had additionally careworn the necessity for cooperation from Kabul.
“Afghanistan should perceive that lasting peace can solely be realised by reining in TTP and different terrorist teams working from Afghan territory,” he stated.
‘Left between unhealthy and worse choices’
The TTP, which emerged in 2007, is distinct from the Taliban in Afghanistan however shares deep ideological, social and linguistic ties with the group. Pakistan accuses the Taliban of offering sanctuary to the TTP on Afghan soil, a cost Kabul denies.
Abdul Basit, a scholar on the Worldwide Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Analysis at Singapore’s S Rajaratnam College of Worldwide Research, stated Pakistan’s assault confirms the collapse of the non permanent ceasefire that adopted the talks late final yr.
Basit questioned the logic behind Pakistan’s bombings.
“The extra Pakistan will strike in Afghanistan, the extra Kabul and TTP will come nearer,” he advised Al Jazeera.
On the identical time, Basit stated, he understood Pakistan’s dilemma. “They must retaliate after shedding so many safety personnel,” he stated, describing Pakistan as being “left between unhealthy and worse choices”.
The losses for Pakistan in latest months have been steep. Final yr was among the many deadliest in practically a decade, with 699 assaults recorded nationwide, a 34 % improve from the earlier yr, based on the Pak Institute for Peace Research.
Its 2025 safety report stated a minimum of 1,034 individuals have been killed within the renewed wave of violence, marking a 21 % rise in “terrorism-related fatalities”. “As well as, 1,366 individuals have been injured over the course of the yr, underscoring the rising human price of terrorism,” the report stated.
Cross-border air raids usually are not new. The same operation in December 2024 killed a minimum of 46 individuals, most of them civilians. That episode prompted sharp warnings from Kabul, however assaults on Pakistani soil — blamed by Islamabad on the TTP — continued.
Some consultants stated Pakistan’s technique wanted to contain greater than army stress on the Taliban.
Fahad Nabeel, who heads the Islamabad-based analysis consultancy Geopolitical Insights, stated Pakistan should additionally work to construct goodwill amongst Afghans.
“Reopening the border and resuming bilateral commerce are two attainable measures that Pakistan can undertake. Pakistan additionally must share actionable intelligence with allied nations like China, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkiye to extend stress on the Afghan Taliban to behave towards anti-Pakistan militant teams,” he advised Al Jazeera.
The India query
An intriguing dimension of the disaster has been not solely who Pakistan focused, however who responded.
India, Pakistan’s nuclear-armed rival, condemned the air raids and highlighted civilian casualties in Afghanistan, whereas remaining silent on the assaults inside Pakistan that preceded them.
For officers in Islamabad, New Delhi’s assertion bolstered a notion that India and the Taliban authorities are edging nearer in ways in which complicate Pakistan’s safety calculus.
That shift has gathered tempo over the previous yr. Afghan International Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi’s six-day visit to India final October marked the primary journey by a senior Taliban official because the group returned to energy in 2021. India reopened its embassy in Kabul throughout the identical interval.
When a magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck northern Afghanistan weeks later, India was among the many first to ship assist and later gifted ambulances to Kabul, gestures intently watched in Islamabad.
Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif claimed in October that India had “penetrated” the Taliban management and urged that Kabul’s rising ties with New Delhi made it much less keen to chop ties with the TTP. He provided no public proof to again his claims.
Basit stated whereas Pakistan’s assaults on Afghanistan would quantity to “India’s acquire” — drawing the Taliban and New Delhi nearer, with a shared enemy in Islamabad — India confronted limitations imposed by geography. “It may present humanitarian help to Afghanistan, however nothing greater than that,” he stated.
Nonetheless, Nabeel argued, Pakistani policymakers want readability on how one can handle armed teams working from Afghan soil.
“Pakistan can’t afford to maintain each borders [with Afghanistan and India] engaged at a time when the prospects of army confrontation between the US and Iran are rising with every passing day,” he stated, referring to rising tensions within the Center East.
Narrowing choices
Pakistan’s japanese border with India has remained tense because the two countries had a four-day army confrontation in Could final yr after an assault on vacationers in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir, during which 26 individuals have been killed. India blamed Pakistan, which denied any function.
To the west, the Taliban authorities reveals little signal of appearing decisively towards the TTP, say Pakistani officers. At dwelling, a surge in assaults, together with in massive cities, has intensified public stress on the army to reply forcefully.
Sunday’s air raids have been meant to undertaking power to Kabul, say consultants. Whether or not they quantity to a coherent long-term technique is much less clear, particularly because the Taliban has pledged retaliation.
However Basit identified that the Taliban management additionally must undertaking power domestically and reply to entrenched “anti-Pakistan sentiment” amongst Afghans.
“Kabul is nicely inside its rights to reply, contemplating it’s a matter of their very own sovereignty, but additionally as a result of by doing that, the general public will rally behind them and improve their home legitimacy, as we noticed within the final cycle of assaults,” he stated.
