Military escalation has resumed between Pakistan and Afghanistan, with gunfire continuing along the border and air strikes carried out inside Afghan territory, in the latest test of the ceasefire agreement reached by the two countries last March. The clashes follow months of uneasy calm, amid security disputes that the agreement failed to resolve.
Pakistani security sources said on Friday that their forces had thwarted an Afghan attack attempt in the border area of Ghulistan and killed several members of the Afghan Taliban movement. They added that intermittent gunfire continued between Taliban members and Pakistani security forces, while the state of alert was raised in the border area.
Pakistani strikes target sites inside Afghanistan
According to their account, this followed Pakistani forces thwarting what they described as an attempt by militants to infiltrate across the border. The current escalation began after an attack on the police headquarters in the city of Kohat, in north-western Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, last Friday.
A suicide attacker detonated himself inside a mosque located at the headquarters, killing at least 31 people, including 16 police officers, and injuring more than 100 others. Kohat police chief Zulfiqar Haider said security forces killed 6 militants who tried to storm the police headquarters immediately after the blast.
Before the attack, the Pakistani army had announced that 10 militants were killed during security operations conducted between Tuesday and Thursday in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Two days after the Kohat attack, Islamabad said it had targeted what it described as terrorist camps in the border area with Afghanistan. Pakistan's Ministry of Information said the strikes destroyed 3 targets, along with large quantities of weapons and ammunition stored there.
Conflicting accounts of the raid targets
Two Pakistani security officials gave an additional account, saying that 28 suspected militants had been killed in attacks on hideouts where they had been sheltering. The Afghan government, however, rejected Pakistan's account of the nature of the targeted sites, saying the strikes hit civilian areas in the east of the country. Afghan government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the attacks targeted, among other sites, a shop and a house in Kunar and Paktika provinces.
He said the raids killed 3 civilians and injured 4 others. He condemned the Pakistani strikes on Afghan territory, describing them as a “repetition of crimes”. Mujahid accused what he called “Pakistani military circles” of trying to divert attention from their security failures by carrying out strikes on Afghanistan.
Security dispute over armed groups and the border
The statements highlight the disparity between the two countries' accounts of the aims of the military operations and the nature of the resulting casualties. The clashes are linked to a broader security dispute over the activity of armed groups on both sides of the border. Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces, which border Afghanistan, have seen attacks by armed groups against security forces and civilians.
Islamabad accuses groups it says operate from inside Afghanistan of being behind attacks on Pakistani territory. It also accuses the Taliban government in Kabul of harbouring Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan militants, who have carried out attacks against the Pakistani authorities for years.
The Taliban government denies allowing Afghan territory to be used as a launchpad for attacks on Pakistan and rejects the accusations made by Islamabad. Afghan officials, in turn, accuse Pakistan of harbouring groups hostile to their government and of failing to respect Afghanistan's sovereignty, particularly as Pakistani air strikes inside the country continue to recur.
Rounds of escalation preceded the latest clashes in June and February
The current escalation was preceded by a period of tension in late June, when Pakistan carried out air strikes inside Afghanistan, saying they targeted militants. The Afghan government and the United Nations, however, said at the time that dozens of civilians had been killed in the strikes, which hit areas in eastern Afghanistan. The June clashes were followed by an uneasy calm that lasted until clashes and raids resumed this week.
The wider round of confrontation dates back to late February, when fighting broke out and continued for several weeks, with shelling reaching the city of Kandahar and the Afghan capital, Kabul. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, UNAMA, said weeks of reciprocal escalation had resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Afghan civilians.
In March, mediation efforts involving several countries led to a ceasefire agreement between the two countries, helping to reduce the level of military confrontation. But the agreement did not permanently address the causes of the dispute.
Islamabad's accusations that Kabul was harbouring Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan militants, alongside Afghan accusations that Pakistan was violating its sovereignty and supporting groups hostile to the Taliban government, remained unresolved. The accusations have returned to the forefront of the crisis with the latest escalation.
