The long-simmering tension between Pakistan and Afghanistan has officially boiled over into what looks like a shooting war. Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif announced that “open war” now exists between the two countries, while scolding the Taliban for violating “the rights that Islam grants women.” Yes, that line deserves a slow clap.
The latest round of violence began Sunday when Pakistan launched airstrikes inside Afghanistan against what it described as “refugee camps” housing militants. Islamabad says the targets were Pakistani Taliban fighters — also known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan — along with affiliates and a group linked to the Islamic State. Kabul, meanwhile, insists the strikes hit an Islamic seminary and civilian homes, killing 18 people, including women and children. As always in this neighborhood, both sides are lying with straight faces.
These strikes didn’t come out of nowhere. Pakistan has suffered a wave of bombings over the past month targeting military personnel and Shia Muslims. In response, Afghanistan’s Taliban government launched what it called an “offensive” Thursday against Pakistani military bases along the border.
The hostility runs deep. Afghanistan has never accepted the Durand Line, the 1893 border drawn between British India and Afghanistan. Pashtun populations on both sides of that line identify more with Kabul than Islamabad. Many trace the rise of the TTP in 2007 to Pakistan’s attempt to leverage the U.S. war in Afghanistan to control these contested areas. Since the Biden administration’s disastrous withdrawal in 2021, the TTP has had little else to do but kill Pakistanis.
And looming over all of this is the nuclear issue. Pakistan has nuclear weapons designed for regional targets — the kind Afghanistan is full of. If this conflict escalates, the possibility of Pakistan using them can’t be brushed aside, no matter how uncomfortable that makes diplomats in air-conditioned offices.
This whole mess has an ugly historical echo. During the Iran-Iraq War, two brutal regimes spent years grinding each other into dust. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger reportedly said, “It’s a pity they both can’t lose.” The same grim logic applies here. Pakistan spent two decades aiding and sheltering the Taliban while pretending to be America’s ally. The Taliban, meanwhile, represent a culture frozen in barbarism.
So now these former partners in hypocrisy are turning on each other. It’s brutal, tragic, and dangerous — but it also exposes the reality of what happens when radicalism meets double-dealing. If there’s any silver lining, it’s that this conflict lays bare the consequences of decades of bad choices and worse alliances. And history, sooner or later, has a way of settling accounts.
