Open War, Stalled Peace

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

The current escalation began on February 22, 2026, when Pakistan struck what it described as seven Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Islamic State Khorasan Province camps in Nangarhar, Paktika and Khost, claiming more than seventy militants killed. The Afghan Taliban responded four days later with a large-scale ground offensive along the Durand Line, with both sides reporting heavy casualties. Within forty-eight hours, Pakistan’s defence minister had declared that Islamabad was in “open war” with Afghanistan, and Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) had announced Operation Ghazab lil-Haq — “Wrath for the Truth” — a campaign now in its third month.