Pakistan considers itself in an “open war” with neighboring Afghanistan, Pakistan’s defense minister said Friday, in the worst escalation of violence since a Qatar-mediated ceasefire in October.
The comments by Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif came after Afghanistan launched a cross-border retaliatory attack on Pakistan overnight that saw Islamabad hit back with airstrikes on Kabul.
Asif said in an X post that Pakistan had hoped for peace in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of NATO forces in 2021 and expected the Taliban, which seized power in the country, to focus on the welfare of the Afghan people and regional stability.
Instead, he said that the Taliban had turned Afghanistan “into a colony of India,” Pakistan’s regional archrival with which it has periodically engaged in wars, clashes and skirmishes since gaining independence from British colonial rule in 1947. India has had improved ties with Afghanistan recently, offering to enhance bilateral trade, to the annoyance of Islamabad.
“Our patience has now run out. Now it is open war between us,” he said. There was no immediate reaction from Afghan officials.
Afghan authorities in the eastern Nangarhar province said that fighting was ongoing in the Torkham border area Friday morning. The province’s information directorate said that Pakistani mortar fire hit civilian areas in Torkham, including a refugee camp which had been evacuated overnight. In response, Afghanistan was targeting Pakistani army posts across the border, it said.
The defense minister accused Afghanistan of “exporting terrorism.” Islamabad frequently levies the allegation at its western neighbor as militant violence has surged in Pakistan, accusing Afghanistan of supporting the Pakistani Taliban, or TTP, and outlawed Baloch separatist groups. The TTP is separate from but closely allied with Afghanistan´s Taliban. Pakistan accuses the TTP of operating from inside Afghanistan, a charge both the group and Kabul deny.
Pakistan has frequently accused neighboring India of backing the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army and the Pakistani Taliban, allegations New Delhi denies.
Asif’s comments came hours after Pakistan carried out airstrikes in Afghanistan´s capital, Kabul, as well as in Kandahar in the south and Paktia province in the southeast, according to Pakistani officials and Afghanistan government spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid. Pakistan says the strikes were in retaliation for the Afghan cross-border attacks.
Afghanistan said that its military launched its attack late Thursday into Pakistan along the border in six provinces, in retaliation for deadly Pakistani airstrikes on Afghan border areas Sunday.
“In response to the repeated rebellions and insurrections of the Pakistani military, large-scale offensive operations were launched against Pakistani military bases and military installations along the Durand Line,” Mujahid said on X on Thursday night. The two countries´ more than 2,600-kilometer (1,600-mile) long border is known as the Durand Line, which Afghanistan hasn’t formally recognized.
Both governments have issued sharply differing casualty claims and said that they inflicted heavy losses on the other. The claims couldn’t be independently verified.
Afghanistan´s Defense Ministry said overnight that 55 Pakistani soldiers had been killed, including some whose bodies were taken into Afghanistan, and that “several others were captured alive.”