Border flashpoint: Pakistan and Afghan Taliban locked in escalating conflict

Weeks after the Taliban's lightning offensive in 2021 wrested control of Afghanistan from a U.S.-led military coalition, Pakistan's then intelligence chief flew into the capital Kabul for talks, where the serving lieutenant general told a reporter: "Don't worry, everything will be okay." Five years on, Islamabad is locked in heavy fighting with the Islamist group, which Pakistan's Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif described on Friday as an "open war." The turmoil means that a wide swathe of Asia – from the Gulf to the Himalayas – is now in flux, with the United States building up a military deployment against Afghanistan's neighbor Iran even as relations between Pakistan and arch rival India remain on edge after four days of fighting last May. At the heart of the conflict with Afghanistan is Pakistan's accusation that the Afghan Taliban provides support to militant groups, including the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), that have carried out attacks inside Pakistan. The Afghan Taliban denies the charge, insisting that Pakistan's security situation is its internal problem. Although tensions have simmered along their rugged 2,600-km (1,615-mile) frontier for months, following clashes last October, Friday's fighting is notable because of Pakistan's use of warplanes to hit Taliban military installations. These include targets deep inside the country in Kabul, as well as the southern city of Kandahar, the seat of Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, according to Pakistan military spokesman Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry. The clashes are unlikely to end there. "We are in uncharted territory," said Abdul Basit, an expert on militancy and violent extremism at Singapore's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. "What we are witnessing is a recipe for instability, as a result of which there will be more violence, there will be more tensions. And terrorist groups will gain strength by exploiting the chaos." Nuclear-armed Pakistan has a formidable military of 660,000 active personnel, backed by a fleet of 465 combat aircraft, several thousand armoured fighting vehicles and artillery pieces. Across the border, the Afghan Taliban has only around 172,000 active military personnel, a smattering of armoured vehicles and no real air force. But the battle-hardened group, which took on a phalanx of Western military powers in 2001 and outlasted them, has the option to lean on insurgents like the TTP and the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), moving beyond border skirmishes. "So either the Taliban can basically take a step back from the brink, or they can step forward and continue fighting at the borderland, but also increase support for TTP, BLA, and all the other groups to operate inside Pakistan," said Avinash Paliwal, reader in international relations at SOAS University of London. Based in Pakistan's largest province of Balochistan that borders both Iran and Afghanistan, the BLA has been at the centre of a decades-long insurgency, which in recent years has staged large coordinated attacks. Pakistan has long accused India of backing the insurgents, a charge repeatedly denied by New Delhi, which has retained a robust military deployment along the border since last May. "A two-front situation has long been a nightmare scenario for Pakistan," said former Pakistan diplomat Maleeha Lodhi. "For Pakistan, a prolonged breakdown in relations (with Afghanistan) compounds its security challenge, given the unstable situation on the eastern frontier with India." Although a raft of countries with influence – including China, Russia, Turkey and Qatar – have indicated an openness to help mediate the conflict, all such efforts have been met with limited success so far. "The challenge for now is that there's a huge gap between the expectations of the two sides," said Ibraheem Bahiss, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group focusing on Afghanistan. "We need to somehow bridge that to come to a more realistic compromise that's both doable and digestible for both sides."