Military tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan escalated again after the Afghan Taliban launched a cross-border attack on Pakistani security officials on Thursday evening, and in the morning Islamabad's armed forces launched air strikes on government facilities in Kabul and Kandahar, world agencies reported, BTA reports.
The Taliban attacked Pakistani border troops, saying that this was a retaliation measure against the deadly air strikes that the Pakistani army launched at the end of last week on military camps in Afghanistan.
A few hours later, Kabul was rocked by explosions, the British newspaper "Guardian" writes.
Pakistani Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said yesterday that the air strikes The strikes targeted targets in Kabul, Kandahar and Paktia province. Tarar said 133 Taliban officials were killed and more than 200 wounded in the attacks.
The Pakistani army has for the first time directly attacked the ruling Taliban, rather than fighters it claims are backed by them, Reuters notes.
The Afghan Defense Ministry said, quoted by the "Guardian", that 55 Pakistani soldiers were killed in fighting along the border, with eight Afghan casualties and 11 wounded. The statement also said that Afghan forces had destroyed 19 Pakistani military posts and two bases.
"Our patience has run out. "Now we are in open war," Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif said yesterday, as quoted by the Associated Press.
The Pakistani army carried out airstrikes again tonight, with senior security officials telling the AP that "key military facilities" of the Taliban in Afghanistan's Laghman province were destroyed.
Relations between the two neighboring countries have deteriorated in recent months over Pakistan's accusations that the Afghan government is helping the Pakistani Taliban, known as the "Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan" (TTP). The armed group has been waging a campaign against Pakistani security forces for years.
The TTP emerged in 2007 as a merger of several armed groups operating in the territory of northwestern Pakistan, notes "Al Jazeera". The TTP has been responsible for a number of attacks on markets, mosques, airports, military bases and police stations, and has also seized territory, mostly along the Afghan border but also deep inside Pakistani territory. TTP fighters have also fought alongside the Afghan Taliban against US-led forces in Afghanistan. Although the TTP is a separate movement from the Afghan Taliban, the two groups share deep ideological, social and linguistic ties. Pakistan accuses the Taliban of providing sanctuary to TTP fighters on Afghan soil, a charge Kabul denies.
The TTP killed more than 440 people in about 300 attacks in Pakistan last year, according to the Islamabad-based think tank Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies. More than 80 percent of the victims were security forces, the "New York Times" added. Last fall, the TTP claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at a courthouse in the Pakistani capital, killing 12 people.
Pakistan has a much larger military capacity than Afghanistan, but the Taliban are well-prepared for guerrilla warfare, Reuters reported. They have been hardened by two decades of fighting against the U.S.-led military coalition that withdrew from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021.
Clashes between Pakistan and Afghanistan in October left dozens dead. The hostilities were halted thanks to talks brokered by Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
The foreign ministers of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia discussed in a telephone conversation yesterday the possibilities of reducing tensions, the kingdom's foreign ministry said, without specifying whether Riyadh was involved in mediating a ceasefire.
Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulaziz al-Khulaifi also spoke with his Afghan and Pakistani counterparts in an attempt to reduce tensions, AFP reported.
Russia, the only country to officially recognize the Taliban government, called for a cessation of hostilities and indicated that it would consider mediating talks if the two sides approached Moscow with such a request.
The Taliban government in Afghanistan has expressed readiness for talks.
Abdul Basit, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, told CNN that "dangerous times lie ahead." "Any retaliatory strike by the Afghans will be directed at the urban centers of Pakistan... That's a recipe for chaos, and chaos is the environment in which terrorist networks thrive," Basit said. "The Afghan Taliban have drones, they have suicide bombers, they are being resourceful," he added.
"Pakistan has made it clear that it will take further action if the Afghan Taliban do not take action against TTP leaders and fighters on Afghan soil," Samina Ahmed, a South Asia expert at the International Crisis Group think tank, told CNN. "Islamabad and Kabul must urgently resume negotiations with the mediation of reliable partners such as Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia," Ahmed added.