Pakistan carried out airstrikes on Afghanistan’s two largest cities on Friday, including the capital, Kabul, according to officials from both nations, escalating months of tension and border skirmishes into an open conflict.
Beyond Kabul, home to six million people, the strikes hit the southern city of Kandahar — where the Taliban’s supreme leader, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada, lives — and the border province of Paktia, according to Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban government.
Pakistan launched the strikes hours after Afghan troops had attacked Pakistani border positions, according to Afghan and Pakistani officials. The Afghan attacks were described as retaliation for Pakistani strikes earlier in the week.
“Our cup of patience has overflowed,” Pakistan’s defense minister, Khawaja Asif, said on social media. “Now it is open war between us and you.”
At least one ammunition depot was bombed in Kabul, according to an Afghan military officer who reached the site shortly afterward and spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the clashes publicly. Pakistan’s state broadcaster said an ammunition depot in Kandahar had also been bombed.
Relations between the neighboring countries have deteriorated in recent months over Pakistan’s accusations that the Afghan government is harboring the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. The militant group has waged a relentless campaign against Pakistani security forces in recent years, and last fall claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed a dozen people at a courthouse in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital.
Pakistan says the Taliban allow the Pakistani Taliban to train and operate freely in Afghanistan, from where they launch attacks across the 1,600-mile border. The Taliban deny hosting the group and argue that Pakistan’s government is deflecting blame for its own domestic security failures.
In private, Afghan officials have acknowledged the Pakistani Taliban’s presence in Afghanistan. Aside from Pakistan, they have also faced pressure from China and Russia to rein in militant groups operating in the country.
The presence of the Pakistani Taliban and the resurgence of other groups in Afghanistan, including Al Qaeda, has alarmed countries across the region and beyond.
The Afghan government has provided the Pakistani Taliban with weapons, including rifles and drones, according to the United Nations Security Council. The organization also noted in a report published this month that “Al Qaeda continued to enjoy the patronage of the de facto authorities,” referring to Afghanistan’s Taliban-led administration.
The Pakistani Taliban killed more than 440 people in about 300 attacks across Pakistan last year, according to the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, an Islamabad-based research institution. More than 80 percent of the deaths were of security personnel, it said.
Pakistan and Afghanistan shared divergent claims on Friday about the number of deaths from the day’s fighting at the border region, which The New York Times could not immediately confirm. Pakistan claimed it had killed at least 133 Afghan fighters there, according to a government spokesman, Mosharraf Zaidi. Mr. Mujahid, the Afghan spokesman, said 55 Pakistani soldiers had been killed.
The clashes on Friday come during the holy month of Ramadan, which United Nations officials hoped would promote peace between the two countries. Similar mediation efforts by Qatar, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia led to a cease-fire in October, but the truce has been undermined by frequent border clashes.
Pakistan’s growing hostility toward the Taliban in recent months represented a sharp turn from decades of tacit support for the group. The Afghan Taliban leadership lived in southern Pakistan during the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. After the Taliban swept back to power in 2021, the Pakistani government initially accommodated them, and there were even talks that Afghanistan could join a China-Pakistan economic corridor.
That seems out of the question now.
“This is not a government,” Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, the Pakistani military spokesman, said of the Taliban in a recent interview with The Times. “They are warlords. Afghanistan is a space where a nonstate militia is sitting.”
Abbas Araghchi, the foreign minister of Iran, which shares borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan, said on Friday that Iran was ready to mediate.
“In the blessed month of Ramadan, the month of self-restraint and strengthening solidarity in the world of Islam, it is fitting that Afghanistan and Pakistan manage and resolve their existing differences within the framework of good neighborliness and through the path of dialogue,” Mr. Araghchi said on social media.
Elian Peltier is The Times’s bureau chief for Pakistan and Afghanistan, based in Islamabad.
The post Pakistan Strikes Afghanistan in ‘Open War’ Against Taliban Government appeared first on New York Times.
