Pakistan is in ‘open war’ with Afghanistan, its defense minister says
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Pakistan and Afghanistan exchanged cross-border attacks overnight, government officials from both countries confirmed to NBC News Friday, alleging heavy casualties on both sides as Pakistan’s defense minister declared “open war” between the two South Asian nations.
Tensions between the two countries, which share a 1,600-mile border, have been simmering for months as they struggle to maintain a Qatar-mediated ceasefire in October, with occasional cross-border skirmishes. Pakistan, grappling with a surge in militant attacks since the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, says attackers are using Afghanistan as a base.
The Taliban, which returned to power with the US withdrawal, deny harboring militants.
The fighting threatens to further destabilize a region where terrorist groups such as the Islamic State and al-Qaeda are trying to remobilize.
The latest violence began Thursday evening when the Taliban launched what they called retaliatory attacks on military installations in northwest Pakistan. Residents and government and military officials in Pakistan’s border areas said heavy fighting began around 8 p.m. local time (10 a.m. ET), causing panic among residents.
“We had to leave our homes in the middle of the night” as Afghan forces fired rockets and mortar shells from across the border, said Dilbar Khan Afridi, a tribesman fleeing the Tirah Valley, a mountainous region in the Khyber district of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Hours later, Pakistan said it had struck military targets in Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, as well as Kandahar and Paktia provinces.
“Pakistani counter-attacks against targets in Afghanistan continue,” a Pakistani government spokesperson, Mosharraf Zaidi, said on Friday on X. Earlier, he said Pakistan carried out the strikes “in response to unprovoked Afghan attacks.”
Both sides have had conflicting claims about the damage and losses they inflicted on each other.
Zaidi said 133 Afghan Taliban had been killed and more than 200 wounded, with “many more casualties,” he estimated. He did not specify where the victims occurred. He also said 27 Afghan Taliban posts had been destroyed and nine captured.
Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said eight Taliban fighters were killed and 11 wounded in Nangarhar province.
He said Afghanistan’s previous attack on Pakistan killed 55 Pakistani soldiers, some of whose bodies were transported to Afghanistan, and others were captured alive. Nineteen posts of the Pakistani army were seized, he said. Zaidi denied the claims.
The Taliban said Thursday night’s attacks were retaliation for Pakistan’s deadly strikes on Afghan border areas on Sunday. Pakistan said the attacks targeted militants and that at least 70 of them were killed, while Afghanistan said dozens of civilians were killed, including women and children.
Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif said on Friday that since regaining power in 2021, the Taliban had made Afghanistan a “proxy for India” – Pakistan’s main rival – and made it a staging ground for militants who began “exporting terrorism”.
“Our cup of patience has overflowed,” Asif said on X. “Now it’s open war between us and you.”
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres urged both sides to protect civilians and “continue to seek to resolve any dispute through diplomacy,” U.N. spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said.
Zalmay Khalilzad, a former US ambassador to Afghanistan, also called for a peaceful resolution. Pakistan and Afghanistan have yet to reach a formal agreement after several rounds of peace talks failed in November.
“This is a terrible dynamic that must end,” he said on X. “Innocent Afghans and Pakistanis are being injured or killed. »
