Why Pakistan’s Military Response Is Justified

When four rudimentary drones crossed from Afghan territory into Balochistan on June 30, Pakistan’s air defence network detected and destroyed all of them within moments. The ISPR statement that followed was measured by the standards of modern conflict: it warned of a “swift, decisive and forceful response” to further provocation and placed the incident within a pattern Pakistan has documented for years, the Afghan Taliban’s continued failure to prevent its territory from being used against its neighbour.

That pattern is no longer just Pakistan’s word against Kabul’s. It has been independently confirmed by the United Nations.

The 16th report of the UN Security Council’s Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team, which is an independent body, and not a Pakistani one, righteously debunked the assertion made by the Taliban that there are no footprints of any terrorist group in Afghanistan by labeling it as “not credible.” According to the report, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) which is also known as Fitna-al-Khawarij (FAK) “has continued to receive substantial logistical and operational support” from the Taliban, while top leadership of the Taliban remains divided about the group, and yet is “unlikely to confront or act against FAK” owing to the history of relations between the two, with the Al-Qaeda blending with the FAK in Afghanistan. By the count of the United Nations itself, attacks carried out by FAK in Pakistan had exceeded 600 in 2025, which the report describes as “the greatest short-term threat to the region’s stability.”

This is not a new obligation Pakistan is inventing. Under the 2020 Doha Agreement, the Taliban explicitly committed to preventing Afghan soil from being used to threaten other countries. That commitment was central to the international legitimacy the group sought upon taking power in 2021. Five years on, the UN’s own monitors say it has not been honoured, even as the Taliban has aggressively targeted its rival, ISIL-K, showing it clearly has the capacity to act against militant groups when it chooses to. That selective enforcement is itself telling: Pakistan’s argument has never been that the Taliban lacks the tools to curb FAK, but that it lacks the will.

Pakistani officials have said so plainly, and on the record. Army spokesperson DG ISPR Lieutenant General Ahmad Sharif told reporters in October 2025 that “Afghanistan is being used as a base of operations against Pakistan, and there is proof and evidence of that.” Weeks later, after suicide bombers killed 15 people in two attacks, including one near a courthouse in Islamabad, Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi told parliament the bombings were carried out by Afghan nationals. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif went further, warning that “open war” between the two countries was possible if Kabul did not take decisive action. These are not abstractions. They are specific, dated incidents tied to specific claims of Afghan-based responsibility, the same pattern that produced the Karachi Rangers camp attack this year, which Pakistan says involved Afghan nationals linked to Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a FAK faction, and which triggered the current round of strikes.

Faced with this record, Pakistan’s military has pursued what officials describe as controlled escalation, force against non-state militant networks, more calibrated restraint toward the Afghan state itself, under the banner of Operation Ghazab-lil-Haq. That restraint is easy to overlook. Pakistan is a nuclear-armed state with a modern air force; it has not deployed anything close to its full capability against a neighbour it accuses of sheltering the groups responsible for over a thousand deaths in a single year. Afghanistan, by contrast, escalated this week by using organised air power against Pakistani territory for the first time in this conflict.

Pakistani strikes in Paktia, Paktika, and Kunar on the terrorists hideout are the defensive measure taken by a responsible state to safe its citizens from futher attacks. Pakistan has stated its targets were militant positions tied to specific attacks on its soil, not civilians, and remains willing to coordinate with Kabul to prevent further harm, an offer that requires a partner willing to act, not merely deny.

There is also a cost the Taliban cannot ignore indefinitely: the closure of border crossings during past rounds of escalation is estimated to cost the Afghan economy roughly $1 million a day, by the UN’s own accounting. Even China, among the Taliban’s most consistent international interlocutors, has told the Security Council that Afghan territory “should not be used to support terrorism” and that Kabul “must work to eradicate terrorist forces on its soil.” When Beijing says it, this is no longer a Pakistan-versus-Afghanistan dispute; it is an international consensus Pakistan has simply been first to act on.

Pakistan has not sought open-ended war. It has sought a partner willing to honour a five-year-old commitment. Until that commitment is met, Islamabad retains both the right and the responsibility to defend its citizens through decisive, targeted action, a position now substantiated not just by its own military, but by the UN’s own monitors.