Follow us on social

2022-02-25t141720z_1894137505_rc2zqs9bvmmk_rtrmadp_3_pakistan-afghanistan-clash-scaled

Deadly Pakistan strikes in Afghanistan reflect growing cross-border tensions

The attacks, which killed more than 45 people this weekend, were in retaliation for a spring offensive by the TPP, a Taliban ally.

Analysis | Middle East

Pakistan conducted airstrikes this weekend in Afghanistan’s Khost and Kunar provinces in response to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan’s (TTP) spring offensive inside Pakistan. As of this writing, the death toll reported by the Afghan Taliban was 45, including women and children, marking a worrisome escalation in cross-border violence between Pakistan and Taliban-led Afghanistan.

The TTP is a coalition of militant groups that in reporting is sometimes referred to interchangeably as the Pakistani Taliban. It took the international stage and became a steadfast enemy of the Pakistani state when the group attacked the Army Public School in Peshawar in December 2014. This attack was a catalyst for Pakistani military operations such as Zarb-e-Azb and Operation Radd-ul-Fasaad in 2014 and 2017 respectively, which were successful in temporarily curbing militancy inside Pakistan. 

However, in recent years the TTP has reabsorbed splinter terrorist groups into its ranks and is noticably emboldened by the Afghan Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan last summer, which it views as a model to be replicated. 

At the end of March, the TTP killed six Pakistani soldiers in an attack on a Frontier Corps outpost just as it announced that its spring offensive “Operation Al-Badr” would occur during Ramadan. On the night of April 11, Major Shujaat Hussain from the Special Services Group and Sepoy Imran Khan were killed fighting TTP in South Waziristan. On April 14t, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Public Relations office announced that 97 Pakistani officers and soldiers were killed in the first three months of 2022 alone. On the same day, eight soldiers were killed in two incidents, including a TTP ambush that killed seven soldiers in North Waziristan. 

Relations between Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban have now hit a low point since the former refuses to rein in the TTP which is using Afghanistan as a base of operations. The TTP is often distinguished from the Afghan Taliban, but the TTP views itself as a branch of the Afghan Taliban operating in Pakistan. TTP leader Noor Wai Mehsud even pledged allegiance to the Afghan Taliban’s leadership. This stance isn’t new. In 2013, then TTP spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan was reportedly removed from his position for suggesting the TTP was a distinct movement from the Afghan Taliban. 

Today the Afghan Taliban themselves provide the TTP refuge and don’t appear willing or able to restrain the group’s actions against the Pakistani state. Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan was summoned by Taliban leaders after the strikes in Khost and Kunar and Taliban political office spokesperson Mohammed Naeem publicly warned of bad consequences if more strikes were conducted. One prominent Taliban social media personality referred to Pakistan’s military as mercenaries of the United States.

Pakistan maintained relations with the Afghan Taliban throughout the U.S. war in Afghanistan based on two fundamental calculations: (1) the United States would someday leave a fragile Afghan state behind that it may not continue to support; and (2) the Afghan Taliban wouldn’t bite the hand that intermittently fed it. 

The first assumption turned out to be correct, while the latter proved false. The Afghan Taliban view the TTP not only as partners–even ideological brothers, but as leverage over Pakistan. Pakistan’s past negotiations with the TTP have rarely produced long-lasting results, and it may only be a matter of time before the TTP begins to conduct major attacks in more settled areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and major Pakistani cities. Pakistan’s security forces will now have to contend with an emboldened TTP on top of IS-K and Baloch separatist groups. 

Many observers in Washington have collectively shrugged off TTP’s offensive as just desserts for a Pakistani security establishment that refused to fully cut-off the Taliban. The belief that Pakistan played a duplicitous double game during Washington’s war in Afghanistan is nearly axiomatic in Washington. In Islamabad, Pakistan is understood as a victim of Washington’s War on Terror caught between a rock and a hard place. Both are simplistic and self-serving explanations. 

Pakistan declined to double-down on Washington’s war with the Afghan Taliban and instead provided significant aid to the latter. What could have been — if Pakistan had fully bought into Washington’s counterinsurgency against the Taliban — is a counterfactual that will be the subject of doctoral dissertations and revisionist historical accounts for years to come. But Washington also refused to hear Pakistan’s warnings about the weaknesses of the Afghan state it was building and its institutions —particularly the Afghan security forces.

Even Pakistan’s biggest critics would admit that the fragility of these institutions were primarily the result of internal dynamics. Pakistan and the United States were also rarely aligned in their strategy against militants and often counteracted one another. When former Army Chief Pervez Ashfaq Kayani allegedly asked Washington to focus on Eastern Afghanistan in tandem with a Pakistani campaign across the border, Washington instead focused on the south. 

Short-term priorities rarely overlapped and there was no shared long-term vision for Afghanistan. Pakistan became comfortable with the managably off-balance equilibrium of gradual Taliban advances and a continued U.S. presence. That status quo came crashing to the ground when the U.S. withdrew in August.

Washington was ultimately able to extricate itself from the quagmire of the war in Afghanistan last summer but the region cannot. This reality fueled Pakistan’s hedged bet of supporting the United States and the Afghan Taliban to varying degrees at different times. The price of this gamble is an Afghanistan led by ideologues with newfound hubris. But Pakistan’s security establishment may well view this as an outcome that would have occurred regardless, and perhaps even a preferable one to the alternatives. 

Now Pakistan’s war on terror is far from over and its relation with the Afghan Taliban will only get worse. How Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban choose to proceed will have dire consequences for the lives of Afghans and Pakistanis alike. Pakistan’s war on terror features all the contradictions and complexities that haunted Washington’s war in Afghanistan, but it is fighting it at home.


People gather as they wait for the border to open after clashes between Afghan and Pakistani security forces on February 25, 2022. REUTERS/Saeed Ali Achakzai
Analysis | Middle East
Carlos Trujillo
Top image credit: Continental Strategy LLC founder and president Carlos Trujillo being sworn-in as U.S. Ambassador to the Organization of American States on April 5, 2018. IMAGO/piemags via Reuters Connect

Ex-Trump officials cashing in on Latin American tariff fears

Latin America

Top officials from the first Trump administration are cashing in on Latin American countries' hopes and fears about the president’s trade and tariffs policies, recent filings with the Department of Justice's Foreign Agents Registration Unit reveal.

In August, Continental Strategy, LLC — a government relations firm founded by Carlos Trujillo, Trump's former ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), and managed by Alberto Martinez, Secretary of State Marco Rubio's former chief of staff in the Senate — took on two new government clients in the region, Peru and the Dominican Republic's Industry and Trade ministry, for $390,000 and $330,000, respectively.

keep readingShow less
Starmer Macron
Top image credit: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron stand in front of screens during a joint military visit to the MARCOM centre, maritime command centre in Northwood, on July 10, 2025 in London, England. Leon Neal/Pool via REUTERS

France plans risky military deployment while govt is in tatters

Europe

The choice of Paris as the venue for a summit of the European “coalition of the willing” to discuss a “reassurance force” for Ukraine this week has turned out to be deeply unfortunate; for five days after the summit, France may well not have a government. Then again, it’s not clear that any other European capital would have made for a better choice.

France has been plunged into a renewed political crisis by the decision of the prime minister, Francois Bayrou, to hold a parliamentary vote of confidence on September 8 over his plans for steep cuts in public spending in order to reduce France’s public debt while greatly increasing its military spending. French trades unions have promised a general strike on September 18 to block these moves.

keep readingShow less
Daniel Noboa, Xi Jinping
Top photo credit: Beijing, China.- In the photos, Chinese President Xi Jinping (right) and his Ecuadorian counterpart, Daniel Noboa (left), during a meeting in the Great Hall of the People, the venue for the main protocol events of the Chinese government on June 26, 2025 (Isaac Castillo/Pool / Latin America News Agency via Reuters Connect)

Why Ecuador went straight to China for relief

Latin America

Marco Rubio is visiting Mexico and Ecuador this week, his third visit as Secretary of State to Latin America.

While his sojourn in Mexico is likely to grab the most headlines given all the attention the Trump administration has devoted to immigration and Mexican drug cartels, the one to Ecuador is primarily designed to “counter malign extra continental actors,” according to a State Department press release.The reference appears to be China, an increasingly important trading and investment partner for Ecuador.

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.