Afghanistan and Pakistan Trade Fire as Conflict Takes a Dangerous Turn

Afghanistan and Pakistan Trade Fire as Conflict Takes a Dangerous Turn

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Fri, 03/20/2026 - 19:49

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A Taliban security personnel inspects the site after Pakistani airstrikes hit the Secondary Rehabilitation Services Centre in Kabul on March 17, 2026. AFP / Wakil Kohsar

Statement

/ Asia-Pacific 20 March 2026 13 minutes

A mass-casualty incident near Kabul on 16 March marks a significant escalation in hostilities between Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban. More fighting promises nothing but more death, displacement and economic damage. Friendly countries should work together to bring the sides back to the negotiating table.

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Related Tags Afghanistan Pakistan Largely eclipsed by war in the Middle East, the rumbling conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan has taken a dangerous turn. On 16 March, Afghanistan accused Pakistan of carrying out an airstrike that hit a drug rehabilitation centre near the capital Kabul. Calling the bombing a “crime against humanity”, the Taliban authorities claimed that over 400 civilians were killed and 265 wounded, which would make it the single deadliest incident in the two neighbours’ escalating conflict so far. These figures have yet to be verified, however, and Pakistan’s account of the airstrike is starkly different. Officials in Islamabad have denied that they perpetrated a mass-casualty attack, declaring instead that Pakistani forces “precisely targeted military and terrorist infrastructure, including ammunition and technical equipment storage sites” in six strikes across Kabul and Nangarhar, another city. Whatever the truth of the matter, worsening clashes will serve neither Pakistan’s core security interests nor Afghanistan’s. Instead, the two sides should urgently scale down hostilities and resolve their differences through dialogue, brokered by friendly countries. A Deadly Strike Camp Phoenix, located on Kabul’s outskirts, was the main target of the Pakistani strike. The camp had been an important NATO training and logistics hub, providing support to the Afghan army during the war with the Taliban that started in 2001. NATO handed over the premises to the Afghan government in 2014. Two years later, part of it was repurposed into a 2,000-bed drug rehabilitation centre. Dubbed the Omid camp, or “camp of hope”, the Ibn Sina Drug Addiction Treatment Hospital also provided vocational training, such as in tailoring and carpentry, to patients. After returning to power in 2021, the Taliban kept the centre running. As Crisis Group has noted previously, since launching their war on drugs in 2023, the Taliban have converted prisons and various other buildings into equivalent treatment facilities. Amid a torrent of online disinformation on both sides, it seems clear that a Pakistani attack took place, but less evident exactly how many were killed or what was hit. Independent media reporting from the site has confirmed over 100 deaths, while the UN noted at least 143, adding that the toll could rise. According to the World Health Organisation, the Omid camp is the sixth Afghan health facility to have been affected in the round of fighting that began in February. Video footage taken at the site in the bombing’s immediate aftermath seems to show secondary explosions, lending credence to Pakistan’s claims that it was targeting an ammunition depot and a drone storage facility. Even if the precise circumstances and responsibilities are hard to pin down, the 100-plus civilian deaths mark a steep escalation in the conflict. Taliban authorities in Kabul have vowed to “take revenge”. On 17 March, the day after the strike, Pakistan accused Afghan forces of launching a drone attack in Rawalpindi, the location of Pakistani army headquarters. Hostilities appear to have abated since then. On 18 March, Pakistan announced a unilateral five-day pause in operations for Eid al-Fitr, the feast marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan. Hours later, Afghanistan declared a similar suspension of hostilities. Both countries said they were responding to requests from Qatar, Türkiye and Saudi Arabia, which had all been involved in previous mediation efforts, to pause the fighting. Islamabad has nevertheless underlined the high risk that further clashes could break out, warning that it would resume fire “in case of any cross-border attack, drone attack or any terrorist incident inside Pakistan”. Kabul has since accused Islamabad of violating the informal truce, a charge that Pakistani officials have denied. From Friends to Enemies The 16 March strike marked the fifth time Pakistan has carried out aerial bombardment of the Afghan capital since October 2025. The attack came in the wake of drone strikes conducted by the Afghan Taliban on several Pakistani cities on 13 March, which itself were in retaliation for Pakistani aerial attacks on targets in Kabul, Kandahar and Paktia a day before. The Taliban drones were seemingly aimed at military installations, but a number of civilians were wounded, leading Pakistan’s president to admonish Kabul that it had “crossed a red line”. The Pakistani military proceeded to ratchet up its use of force, including airstrikes on Kandahar over the weekend before the attack on Kabul on 16 March. The exchanges of fire since the last week of February have lifted hostilities to a new high, though tensions between the neighbours have been mounting for a year. In earlier days, after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August 2021, Pakistan had been one of the new authority’s few foreign sympathisers. But relations between the two have soured as an effect of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP, better known as the Pakistani Taliban), a jihadist group which first emerged in 2007 in Pakistan’s tribal belt along the Afghan border to contest the state’s control. Though the Pakistani military managed to dislodge the TTP and its affiliates from their strongholds by 2013, the group’s leadership and hundreds of its fighters sought refuge across the border in Afghanistan. When the Afghan Taliban seized power, Islamabad was confident they would repay past favours, chief among them the haven given to the Taliban’s high command during the long fight with NATO forces. But those hopes were dashed. The TTP, which reportedly numbers 6,000 fighters, has since regrouped and intensified attacks on Pakistani territory, particularly over the last couple of years. Pakistani authorities attribute the TTP’s comeback to failed negotiations between the group and the government of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, which the Afghan Taliban brokered in 2021, soon after their return to power. As part of these talks, which resulted in a short-lived ceasefire, hundreds of armed TTP fighters were allowed to return to Pakistan, while dozens more were released from Pakistani prisons. The ceasefire broke down after the TTP refused to disarm and demanded the imposition of sharia law in their former bastions in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, bordering Afghanistan – a concession that was anathema to Islamabad. Militant attacks have since spiked to unprecedented levels. The year 2025 was the deadliest in a decade for Pakistan, with over 600 police and military personnel killed in TTP attacks, along with a similar number of civilians. Pakistani authorities hold Kabul responsible for the resurgence of militancy in the border regions, accusing the Afghan Taliban of refusing to take action against TTP militants, with whom they share ethnic and ideological ties. Frustrated with what it perceives as Kabul’s backing for the group, including harbouring TTP leaders and fighters, and facilitating cross-border attacks and incursions, Pakistan has taken an increasingly hard stance toward the Taliban, applying economic restrictions – the border has been closed for more than five months – and forcibly repatriating hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees and migrants. Islamabad also stepped up its military pressure on the Taliban when it carried out its first-ever airstrike on Kabul on 8 October 2025, responding to a TTP attack that killed eleven military personnel, including senior officers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Afghanistan retaliated on that occasion with cross-border fire at Pakistani military installations. The Struggle to Mediate Alarmed by the rising violence, Türkiye and Qatar attempted to mediate between the two neighbours. On 19 October 2025, their joint efforts clinched a ceasefire, paving the way for more substantive negotiations toward a lasting solution. Subsequent working-level “technical” delegations then met in Istanbul between 25 and 30 October, and again on 6 November, but made no progress despite continuing informal discussions assisted by Saudi mediation. The ceasefire was precarious. It was finally shattered on 21 February, when Pakistan launched airstrikes on purported TTP targets following another spate of militant attacks on its side of the border that claimed the lives of scores of military personnel, police officers and civilians. On 26 February, Kabul retaliated by launching large-scale attacks on Pakistani military positions along the disputed frontier. Pakistan upped the ante by launching Operation Ghazab lil Haq (Righteous Fury), conducting airstrikes and cross-border attacks, while the Taliban reciprocated through Operation Rad-ul Zulm (Countering Injustice). =Described by the Pakistani defence minister as an “open war”, the fighting has now stretched on for more than three weeks. Tit-for-tat attacks have claimed dozens of military and civilian lives on both sides, with no end in sight and no clear off-ramp. In an effort to degrade the Taliban’s means of retaliation, Pakistan has focused its airstrikes on Afghan military assets, including army bases, ammunition depots and weaponry, much of it left behind by the departing NATO forces in 2021. The Taliban, who do not have an air force, have responded with ground assaults along the disputed border as well as drone strikes. With the Afghan Taliban vowing retribution for the 16 March strike in Kabul, the cycle of violence now threatens to set in motion a protracted and increasingly deadly war. The Dangers of Escalation Even by the most conservative estimates, the 16 March strike is one of the biggest mass-casualty incidents in Afghanistan’s history. The shock waves from the attack and its aftermath make the work of restraining both sides far more difficult. Yet, as even a former Pakistani ambassador to Afghanistan has argued, neither side can win this war. Islamabad hopes that greater military pressure will persuade Kabul to comply with its demands, starting with the Taliban taking what it calls “credible and verifiable action” against the TTP. Defining what that looks like in practice was meant to be part of the talks mediated by Türkiye and Qatar in late 2025, but those collapsed before agreement could be found. For the Taliban leadership, which portrays itself as having defied some of the world’s most powerful armies, simply succumbing to Islamabad’s military coercion would be unacceptable. Pakistan clearly has a military edge over its neighbour. But the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have demonstrated that conventional superiority, overwhelming though it may appear, can be challenged by asymmetric fighting methods. The fact that the Taliban managed to fly attack drones over major cities like Islamabad and Rawalpindi is revealing in that regard. The Taliban have sought to counter Pakistan’s dominance of Afghan airspace through drone strikes, and they are likely to ramp up the nascent Afghan drone industry. Kabul’s hope for establishing deterrence through these weapons, however, risks exacerbating the conflict. Islamabad is likely to respond with more airstrikes, which could become even more lethal should an Afghan drone attack cause major civilian and/or military casualties. More killings of Afghan civilians could, in turn, prompt the Taliban to carry out further indiscriminate drone strikes on Pakistani cities – a vicious cycle that could generate appalling harm to civilians on both sides. The conflict is also amplifying calls within the Taliban leadership to shore up support for Pakistani militants, with the understanding that they might be able to wear the Pakistani military down on its home turf. But if the Afghan Taliban gives greater backing to the TTP and other anti-Pakistan insurgents, Islamabad is likely to intensify its military retaliation. The mutual escalation could spell disaster for civilians: more than 100,000 people have already been displaced by the latest round of fighting.  All the signs, in short, point to a spiral of escalating violence that promises much expenditure of firepower but little reward for Pakistan. Though it might be able to withstand its neighbour’s attacks and retaliate, the deepening conflict looks equally unfavourable from Kabul’s perspective. War with Pakistan might have bolstered support for the Taliban regime, as Afghans rally against a common enemy. But the fighting has further isolated Afghanistan on the international stage. While many foreign capitals conveyed condolences to the Afghan people after the 16 March strike, few foreign powers have condemned Pakistan’s military actions, and the calls on Kabul to restrain the militants based on its territory have grown louder. The clashes have also shattered the consensus among regional governments about the need to engage with the Taliban de facto authorities to promote stability in Afghanistan. With trade between the two neighbours interrupted since October, the Taliban’s foreign policy of turning Afghanistan into an interconnectivity hub, linking Central and South Asia, has lost momentum. The greatest tragedy lies in the war’s grinding humanitarian and economic cost. Afghanistan’s economic woes persist, with per capita GDP continuing to decline as the country reels from droughts, natural disasters and trade disruptions, as well as the forced return of hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees from Pakistan and Iran. According to UN agencies, Afghanistan will remain home to one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises in 2026, with approximately 21.9 million people – close to two thirds of the population – requiring aid. For Pakistan, the conflict adds another layer of uncertainty as it struggles to adjust to the shocks from the Middle East war and seeks to secure another International Monetary Fund bailout. Patient and Pragmatic Diplomacy Both parties urgently need to return to diplomatic channels to spare themselves ever more lethal salvoes. Since trust between Islamabad and Kabul has broken down, external mediation remains crucial both to build confidence and, later, to set up verification measures for any agreement. The fact that mediators have succeeded in pushing the sides to agree to a pause in fighting during the Eid season is a positive sign. They should now use the lull to galvanise efforts to secure a more durable outcome. Mediation efforts by Qatar, Türkiye, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and China are welcome, but all need to be careful about creating parallel tracks, which could sow confusion and cast doubt upon any promise that is made. Despite the demands on their attention and energy caused by the Middle East war, all foreign parties involved should coordinate their mediation efforts as much as possible. Any notion that Kabul can immediately corral the TTP is unrealistic. Dealing with jihadist groups often requires at least some level of prior engagement and long-term planning. The same is true for the Islamic State’s local franchise, Islamic State Khorasan Province (IS-KP), which Kabul accuses Islamabad of tolerating – a charge that Pakistan dismisses, pointing out that it is itself on the receiving end of IS-KP violence. Both these jihadist groups have endured despite decades-long campaigns against them by Afghan and Pakistani forces. When squeezed, militants have exploited the porous border to seek sanctuary on the other side or recalibrated the size and distribution of their deployments to survive despite suffering heavy losses. Islamabad’s opinion that its neighbour is entirely responsible for all the TTP-related violence in Pakistan underestimates the difficulty of putting a leash on the group. It might also overestimate the effect that punishing the Taliban will have on militancy. Kabul nonetheless insists it has taken steps to rein in the TTP. The Taliban have relocated many Pakistani militants, their families and others displaced by fighting in the 2010s away from the Pakistani border. They have also allegedly arrested hundreds of Afghan nationals suspected of involvement in anti-Pakistan activities. Still, more can and should be done. Taliban officials have expressed readiness in principle to provide written guarantees that they will not allow cross-border attacks as well as verification mechanisms for following up on their pledges, demands that Pakistan put on the table during negotiations in October and November 2025. But Pakistani officials say Kabul was unwilling to concede on these points, and they have demanded that the Taliban do far more to counter militant activity along the border. But even if these differences can be settled, controlling cross-border militant movement will not be simple. So far, neither side has been able to prevent incursions, with TTP fighters moving across the frontier to attack Pakistani security personnel while IS-KP straddles the border to hit both Afghan and Pakistani targets. Pakistan has managed to fence most of the border and established a labyrinth of detection and monitoring mechanisms. The Taliban now need to strengthen efforts to monitor and police the frontier from their side. Mutual distrust and the stubborn border dispute have tended to hinder attempts at cooperation by the two states, even when they were on good terms. But outside mediation could help them coordinate, enabling them to skirt the thorny issue of the border’s official demarcation and work together to address mutual security concerns.  =An unconditional and immediate crackdown on the TTP, on the other hand, is not a demand that stands any chance of being met by the Afghan Taliban. The TTP is too big and unwieldy, and its historical ties to the Afghan Taliban too strong; many Afghans in border areas also share its antipathy for the Pakistani state. A crackdown could backfire, even leading Taliban fighters or the TTP to join forces with the Islamic State against the country’s Taliban rulers. The latest spike in hostilities does nothing to address security needs, whether for Pakistan or Afghanistan, but merely leaves in its wake wrecked lives, displaced communities and economic ruin. Foreign support is urgently needed to help Islamabad and Kabul find a way to overcome their mutual mistrust and address the threats from jihadist groups that both states are grappling with. Unless the two neighbours return to dialogue, more deadly violence seems inevitable. Related Tags More for you Report /

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