Pakistan launched late-night airstrikes in Afghanistan’s Paktika province on Tuesday, killing at least 15 people, including women and children. The strikes, purportedly targeting members of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), have drawn severe condemnation from the Afghan Taliban, who termed the attacks a violation of international principles and warned of retaliation.
Pak security officials claimed the airstrikes dismantled a terrorist training facility and targeted seven villages in the mountainous region bordering Pakistan. Afghan media reports suggest that one village was completely razed to the ground. While Islamabad attempted to justify the attacks as counter-terrorism efforts, the Taliban’s Ministry of Defense accused Pakistan of targeting refugees from the Waziristan region and called the assault a “cowardly act.”
“This brutal aggression against civilians is a blatant violation of international principles,” the ministry stated. It added that such unilateral actions would not resolve the ongoing tensions, warning that Afghanistan retains the right to defend its sovereignty.
The strikes come amid escalating tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan over Islamabad’s claims that the TTP operates from Afghan soil to conduct attacks within Pakistan. Kabul has repeatedly denied these allegations, accusing Pakistan of using Afghan territory as a scapegoat for its own failures in countering militancy.
Airstrikes in Paktika
Ironically, the strikes were conducted mere hours after Pakistan’s special representative for Afghanistan, Mohammad Sadiq, held talks with the Taliban leadership in Kabul to discuss bilateral ties. Among those he met was Sirajuddin Haqqani, Afghanistan’s acting interior minister, whose family has also been a victim of terrorism in the region.
The airstrikes are the latest in a series of cross-border assaults by Pakistan, which has ramped up its military operations under the guise of action against the TTP since the group unilaterally ended a ceasefire in November 2022. While Islamabad portrays itself as a victim of terrorism, its actions in Afghanistan betray a colonial mindset, where it exerts aggression under the guise of national security, often at the cost of innocent lives.
The Pak Army in-bred terrorist organisation, TTP has gone rogue and significantly increased its attacks on Pak forces. However, Pakistan’s heavy-handed tactics, such as these airstrikes, have done little to curb the threat and have instead deepened the animosity between the two neighbors. This is not the first time, in March, Pak air force jets bombarded border regions in Khost and Paktika, killing scores of civilians in response to an attack on Pak forces by the TTP.