Pakistan’s Defense Minister Says War with Afghanistan is Underway

What Happened?

Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Asif said a state of ‘open war’ between Pakistan and Afghanistan currently exists.

Both sides acknowledged that strike planes from Pakistan hit targets in Kabul and Kandahar, while artillery and gunfire were exchanged along the Pakistan-Afghan border. Pakistan’s military says 274 Taliban fighters have been killed and more than 400 injured in attacks that hit 22 locations. It said 83 Taliban posts had been destroyed and 17 others captured.

A Taliban spokesman from Kabul claimed that fifty-five soldiers from Pakistan had been killed while denying Pakistan’s claims about Taliban fatalities. None of the claims made by Pakistan and Afghanistan have been independently verified as of Friday morning. Both Pakistan and Afghanistan claimed they were engaged in hostilities as retaliation for the actions of the other. 

Why it Matters

The airstrikes by Pakistan against Kabul and Kandahar represent the most significant escalation of hostilities between the two neighbors in decades. Based on the initial reports, the conflict is taking place along much of the Afghan-Pakistan border, an enormous swath of land which, if superimposed on a map of the United States, would reach from New York City to Santa Fe, New Mexico. The unprecedented scale of the hostilities could destabilize central Asia.

Hostilities between Afghanistan and Pakistan are nothing new, with dozens of minor incidents having taken place in the past two decades alone. What makes this situation different is the scope of the conflict, including Pakistan’s bombing of Afghan cities for the first time. There have been several attacks by Taliban affiliated groups on Pakistan’s military outposts along the border region in the past weeks, and that appears to be what triggered the escalation of force by Pakistan’s military.

Pakistan has long regarded the Taliban as a useful tool that can be controlled, which is why Islamabad has provided Taliban groups with weapons and cash. The primary focus of Pakistan’s military is to prepare for war with India, and because Pakistan itself is much smaller than India, Afghanistan is viewed as a place that can provide strategic depth.

Strategic depth means that if an initial attack by India pushed Pakistan’s forces back, they could regroup and counterattack from Afghan soil. To do that, Pakistan has cultivated close ties with the Taliban, but the two have often butted heads.

This time, Pakistan’s Minister of Defense said they have ‘run out of patience’ with the Taliban. The Taliban takes Pakistan’s money and arms but doesn’t always do what Islamabad wants them to. That tension appears to have finally caused a serious rupture between the two, which has now escalated into a large-scale conflict.

In previous conflicts, the two sides usually returned to negotiations after limited exchanges of fire, but the larger scale of this situation will make that more difficult.

How it Affects You

War between Pakistan and Afghanistan could destabilize central Asia by convincing India the time to strike Pakistan is now, while it is distracted by war with Afghanistan and a growing insurgency in Baluchistan. Pakistan has nuclear weapons, and Pakistan’s Army is the real power in Pakistan’s government.

War could bring a fresh round of instability to Pakistan, and if it gets beyond the control of Pakistan’s Army, the government could collapse. Nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorist groups could be one of the most dangerous outcomes of such an event.