Open War, Stalled Peace: The Durand Line in 2026
A few months ago, Pakistan declared what its defence minister Khawaja Asif called an “open war” against the Afghan Taliban. Since then, Islamabad has launched the most sustained cross-border air campaign of its post-2021 Afghanistan policy; Beijing has brokered a ceasefire; and a United Nations report has tallied hundreds of Afghan civilian deaths. None of it has produced an off-ramp. As we noted in March, Pakistan’s diplomatic windfall from the Iran war has not yet translated into leverage over Kabul. If anything, the two tracks have moved in opposite directions: as Islamabad’s external standing has risen, its western frontier has hardened into a structural conflict the world has largely stopped watching.
The Strike Cycle
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