Pakistan Declares 'Open War' With Afghanistan

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, the AP reports.

• Asif said in a post on X 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.
• The Taliban "gathered terrorists from around the world in Afghanistan and began exporting terrorism," Asif wrote. "They deprived their own people of basic human rights. They took away from women the rights that Islam grants them." Islamabad frequently levies the "exporting terrorism" 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.
• 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 that had been evacuated overnight. In response, Afghanistan was targeting Pakistani army posts across the border, it said.

• 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.
• 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."
• Mosharraf Ali Zaidi, a spokesperson for Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, denied that any Pakistani soldiers had been captured. He said on X that at least 133 Afghan fighters were killed and more than 200 wounded.
• Tension has been high between the two neighbors for months, with deadly border clashes in October killing dozens of soldiers, civilians, and suspected militants. The violence followed explosions in Kabul that Afghan officials blamed on Pakistan. Islamabad, at the time, conducted strikes deep inside Afghanistan to target militant hideouts. A Qatari-mediated ceasefire ended the fighting, although the two sides still occasionally traded fire across the border.