The Afghanistan-Pakistan Conflict

History of Violent Extremism in Afghanistan

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 triggered a decade-long war led by mujahideen fighters. Following Moscow’s withdrawal in 1989, rival factions turned against one another, plunging the country into civil war. The resulting instability paved the way for the Taliban, who captured Kabul in 1996 and imposed a strict religious order. Afghanistan also became a sanctuary for al-Qaeda, which used the country to recruit and train fighters and plan attacks abroad.

After the Taliban refused to hand over Osama bin Laden following the September 11, 2001, attacks, U.S.-led forces invaded Afghanistan and removed the regime from power. Taliban leaders relocated to southern Afghanistan and across the border into Pakistan, from where they rebuilt their movement and waged an insurgency against Afghan and international forces. U.S. officials long alleged that elements within Pakistan’s security establishment maintained ties with the Taliban and the Haqqani network despite Pakistan’s public support for the U.S.-led counterterrorism campaign. In September 2011, Admiral Mike Mullen, then Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Senate committee that the Haqqani network acted as a “veritable arm” of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence; Pakistan’s army chief rejected the charge as not based on facts.

When coalition forces ended their formal combat mission in 2014, Afghan security forces assumed primary responsibility for the war. However, persistent institutional weaknesses, heavy casualties, and continued Taliban attacks prevented them from securing large parts of the country. The conflict remained largely deadlocked for years. Meanwhile, Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISIS-K) emerged in 2015, drawing recruits from groups including the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Seeking to establish a caliphate across the historic Khorasan region, ISIS-K expanded the threat of violent extremism beyond Afghanistan, with implications for regional stability and international security.

The Taliban’s Return to Power

In April 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden announced that U.S. military forces would withdraw from Afghanistan by September. As the withdrawal accelerated, the Taliban intensified attacks on Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) bases, seized territory, and captured key border crossings. On August 15, 2021, Taliban fighters entered Kabul, President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, and the Afghan government collapsed before the official U.S. withdrawal deadline.

The takeover triggered a major evacuation operation involving U.S. and allied forces, alongside thousands of Afghans who had worked with international forces. On August 26, 2021, an ISIS-K suicide bombing outside Kabul airport killed 13 U.S. service members and approximately 170 Afghans. On August 31, the Pentagon announced the completion of the U.S. troop withdrawal, ending nearly two decades of American military involvement in Afghanistan.

Since returning to power, the Taliban have imposed severe restrictions on women and girls, reversing many of Afghanistan’s gains in education and women’s rights. Girls remain barred from secondary education, while women face extensive restrictions on movement, employment, and participation in public life. Afghanistan also remains vulnerable to terrorist attacks by ISIS-K, which claimed responsibility for major attacks including the September 2022 bombing of the Russian Embassy in Kabul.

Afghanistan continues to face one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated that 22.9 million people, almost half the population, required humanitarian assistance in 2025. Widespread undernourishment, declining international aid, and climate-driven disasters have deepened food insecurity. Sanctions, frozen central bank assets, and limited international engagement have further strained the economy. According to the World Bank, Afghanistan’s economy contracted by 20.7 percent in 2021 and a further 6.2 percent in 2022, a cumulative decline of roughly one-quarter, worsening poverty and humanitarian needs despite international humanitarian exemptions.

Conflict Between Afghanistan and Pakistan

The Afghanistan-Pakistan conflict reflects a deeper breakdown in bilateral relations, driven by competing security priorities, the Afghan Taliban’s relationship with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and the failure of diplomacy to secure verifiable counterterrorism commitments. Since the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, Islamabad has repeatedly urged the authorities in Kabul to dismantle terrorist sanctuaries on Afghan soil, particularly those used by the TTP to plan and launch attacks inside Pakistan. The Afghan Taliban government maintains that its territory is not being used to threaten other countries, while Pakistan argues that continued militant activity demonstrates the limits of Kabul’s assurances.

From Bilateral Tensions to Military Confrontation

Before October 2025, relations between Islamabad and Kabul were marked by recurring diplomatic disputes, border tensions, and Pakistan’s repeated demands for action against terrorist groups operating from Afghan territory. The central disagreement concerned the Afghan Taliban’s willingness and ability to prevent the TTP from using Afghanistan as an operational base, a question that went well beyond border management.

In October 2025, these tensions escalated into direct cross-border military confrontation after Pakistani air strikes targeted suspected terrorist bases in Afghanistan, prompting retaliatory attacks. Qatar and Turkey facilitated negotiations in Doha and Istanbul, resulting in a temporary ceasefire but no durable political settlement. Subsequent Saudi-mediated talks also failed to resolve the underlying security dispute. The episode marked a significant shift from recurring border clashes towards more direct and sustained military escalation.

The renewed hostilities in February and March 2026 further exposed the fragility of the ceasefire arrangements. Following deadly attacks inside Pakistan, Pakistani aircraft struck what Islamabad described as TTP and ISIS-K camps in eastern Afghanistan on 21 February. Afghan Taliban forces attacked Pakistani border positions on 26 February, and Pakistan responded with strikes on targets in Kabul, Kandahar and Paktia. On 27 February, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif described the situation as “open war” in a public statement. This description should be understood as a political characterisation of the hostilities rather than, by itself, a determination of their legal status. The situation is more precisely described as an armed confrontation involving cross-border strikes and retaliatory attacks, with its legal classification dependent on the circumstances and parties involved.

The TTP and the Cross-Border Security Dispute

At the heart of the conflict is Pakistan’s assessment that the TTP continues to operate from Afghan territory with support from elements within the Afghan Taliban’s governing structure. Islamabad has linked major terrorist attacks inside Pakistan to the TTP’s Afghanistan-based leadership and has demanded concrete, verifiable, and irreversible action against the group and other terrorist organisations.

The 38th report of the UN Security Council’s Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team, covering 16 December 2025 to 9 June 2026, found that the Taliban’s continued support for the TTP had contributed to more frequent and lethal attacks in Pakistan, despite some initial measures by Kabul to restrain the group. The report also cited member-state reporting of operational and facilitation links involving the TTP, al-Qaeda, Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISIL-K), and the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA). One member state reported that BLA militants had been trained alongside TTP fighters by al-Qaeda trainers in Afghanistan, and another that ISIL-K and the BLA shared facilitation networks for logistics. These claims rest on individual member-state reporting, and an earlier Monitoring Team report recorded that some member states saw no such association between the BLA and al-Qaeda or ISIL. Even so, the reported linkages raise concerns about the regional reach of militant networks and the possibility of cooperation between groups whose broader objectives differ.

The Afghan Taliban’s rejection of Pakistan’s allegations, coupled with Islamabad’s insistence on verifiable action, has left little room for a durable diplomatic compromise. Kabul describes Pakistani military operations as violations of Afghan sovereignty, while Islamabad presents them as counterterrorism measures against threats emanating from Afghan territory. This disagreement is compounded by the Pak-Afghan border, the contested border inherited from British colonial rule that divides Pashtun tribal areas and remains a longstanding source of tension between the two countries.

Cross-border attacks, attempted infiltrations, exchanges of fire, and reported drone incursions have reinforced mutual distrust. These incidents reflect the absence of an agreed framework for managing border security and addressing allegations of militant activity. Without such a framework, each new attack risks triggering retaliation and further narrowing the space for diplomatic engagement.

Military Asymmetry and the Limits of Deterrence

Pakistan retains a substantial conventional military advantage over the Afghan Taliban, particularly in air power, military equipment, and air-defence capabilities. However, this asymmetry does not automatically translate into a decisive resolution of the security problem. Air strikes and border operations can disrupt terrorist infrastructure and impose costs on militant networks, but they cannot independently eliminate cross-border networks that benefit from sanctuary, local facilitation, and permissive operating environments.

Reported interceptions of Afghan Taliban drones near the Torkham border and Kohat, alongside recurring exchanges of fire in border districts, illustrate the capacity of the confrontation to generate continuing security risks despite Pakistan’s conventional advantages. The strategic challenge is therefore to translate operational pressure into a sustainable reduction in terrorist attacks, which military superiority alone does not achieve.

This distinction matters because counterterrorism operations and interstate military confrontation serve different purposes. Operations against identified terrorist targets may disrupt specific networks, whereas a prolonged confrontation with the Afghan Taliban government risks expanding the conflict, increasing civilian exposure to violence, and creating additional opportunities for militant groups to exploit instability. Military pressure may influence Kabul’s calculations, but its effectiveness ultimately depends on whether it produces verifiable changes in the operating environment of the TTP and other terrorist organisations.

Civilian Harm and Regional Implications

The humanitarian consequences of cross-border military operations further complicate Pakistan’s security objectives. On 16 March 2026, an airstrike hit the Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital in Kabul, a drug rehabilitation facility. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) attributed the strike to Pakistani forces and later recorded at least 269 people killed and 122 wounded at the facility. Afghan authorities put the toll at around 400. Pakistan’s government denied targeting any hospital or civilian facility, saying the strikes hit military and terrorist infrastructure. Such incidents risk deepening hostility among Afghan civilians and strengthening the Afghan Taliban government’s portrayal of Pakistani operations as aggression rather than counterterrorism.

Civilian harm also has broader strategic implications. It can weaken the political space for negotiations, intensify anti-Pakistan sentiment, and allow the Afghan Taliban to frame the dispute around national sovereignty rather than its response to militant groups operating from Afghan territory. For Islamabad, the challenge is to address terrorist threats while limiting civilian harm and preventing the security confrontation from developing into a prolonged conflict with wider regional consequences.

The dispute also affects regional stability beyond the two countries. Terrorist networks operating across Afghanistan and Pakistan can threaten neighbouring states, while prolonged hostilities risk disrupting trade, border movement, and regional connectivity. The reported links among the TTP, al-Qaeda, ISIL-K, and the BLA further complicate the security environment by creating overlapping networks of recruitment, facilitation, and operational support.

Diplomacy and the Conditions for De-escalation

China’s mediation, through informal trilateral talks in Urumqi from 1 to 7 April 2026, alongside earlier initiatives by Qatar, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, reflects wider concern about the destabilising effects of the Afghanistan-Pakistan confrontation. Pakistan has also raised the issue through the United Nations Security Council and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), calling for concrete action against terrorist groups operating from Afghan territory.

These diplomatic initiatives demonstrate that external actors can facilitate communication and help prevent further escalation. However, mediation cannot substitute for action by the parties themselves. Islamabad has maintained that progress in bilateral relations depends on concrete and verifiable measures against the TTP and other terrorist organisations, while the Afghan Taliban government continues to reject Pakistan’s characterisation of its territory as a source of threats to neighbouring states.

A sustainable de-escalation framework would therefore require more than another temporary ceasefire. It would need credible mechanisms to address allegations of cross-border militant activity, monitor compliance with commitments, reduce the risk of retaliatory strikes, and maintain communication during security crises. Without these arrangements, ceasefires are likely to pause hostilities without resolving the dispute that repeatedly produces them.

Ultimately, the trajectory of Afghanistan-Pakistan relations will depend on whether the two sides can separate the immediate security crisis from their wider political disagreements. Pakistan’s central concern is the prevention of terrorist attacks originating from Afghan territory; the Afghan Taliban government’s principal objection centres on sovereignty and the legitimacy of Pakistani military action. Unless these competing positions are addressed through verifiable security arrangements and sustained diplomatic engagement, the conflict will remain a source of instability across South and Central Asia.