Souring relations: Mapping aggressions on Pakistan-Afghanistan border

Eight people were killed in Pakistani airstrikes in two border provinces of Afghanistan early morning on March 18, two days after a terror attack by the Pakistan Taliban claimed the lives of seven soldiers in North Waziristan, escalating tensions between the two nations.

Around 3 am on Monday, Pakistan Air Force jets bombed Laman in the Barmal district of the Paktika province and Afghan Dubai in the Sepera district of Khost province.

Three women and three children were reportedly killed in Paktika and two women died as a result of a house collapse in Khost.

The Taliban said the Pakistani jets targeted “civilians” and condemned the action in a strongly-worded statement. “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan strongly condemns these attacks and calls this reckless action a violation of Afghanistan’s territory. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, which has a long experience of freedom struggle against the superpowers of the world, does not allow anyone to invade its territory,” chief Afghan Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid wrote.

These airstrikes mark the first such action since 2022 when Pakistan targeted militant hideouts in Afghanistan. Although Islamabad has never officially acknowledged those strikes.

On Saturday, March 16, at least seven Pakistani soldiers were killed when a suicide bomber from a newly formed insurgent group rammed an explosive-laden truck into a military post in North Waziristan’s Mir Ali, a town in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province that borders Afghanistan.

While the Jaish-e-Fursan-e-Muhammad claimed responsibility for the attack, Pakistani security officials, as per the Associated Press, believe it’s mainly made up of members of the Pakistani Taliban, also known as the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, an outlawed group that often targets Pakistani soldiers and police.

North Waziristan has historically been a hive of militancy and was the target of a long-running Pakistani military offensive and US drone strikes during the post-9/11 occupation of Afghanistan. Islamabad has accused Kabul’s Taliban government of harbouring TTP militants, allowing them to strike on Pakistani soil with impunity. Kabul has consistently denied the allegations.

Pakistan is believed to have played a key role in the Taliban’s fight against the US-backed democratic governments in Kabul and hoped to benefit from its close relations after the hardliner Islamic rulers returned to that country’s capital in August 2021. But that seems far from the reality now.

Instead, tensions have been prevailing between the neighbours over a range of issues including border claims, migration, and Pakistan’s influence over the interim government in Kabul.

In April 2022, the Pakistani military conducted similar pre-dawn airstrikes on multiple targets in Afghanistan’s Khost and Kunar provinces, killing at least 47 people and injuring 23 others. Relations soured further last year when Pakistan forced thousands of Afghans to depart, citing inadequate paperwork as the reason for their expulsion.