Pakistan–Afghanistan: the origins of a slide into open warfare

Pakistan bombed Afghanistan on 27 February, accusing Kabul in particular of harbouring fighters from Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), responsible for attacks against the Pakistani army. This open warfare has thus reopened a long-standing dispute between Afghanistan and Pakistan along the Durand Line that separates the two states. What factors lie behind the escalation between Islamabad and Kabul, and what is the impact of this conflict on the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan? To what extent does this open warfare take place within an already fragile regional environment? An assessment with Georges Lefeuvre, Associate Research Fellow at IRIS.

What is the starting point of this escalation of tensions between Islamabad and Kabul, and to what extent does the border dispute remain a major issue in this conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan?

The starting point of tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan lies in the border question and in the relationship between the Pakistani authorities and the Taliban[1].

Founded in 1947, Pakistan is a nation-state that nevertheless does not possess immutable borders. To the east, the border with India has been contested from the outset, beginning with the first Indo-Pakistani war over Kashmir in 1947–48. Between Iran and Balochistan, the Goldsmid Line is no longer a subject of dispute, as it was recognised by Tehran and Islamabad in 1954. To the west, Islamabad inherited the Durand Line, at the edge of the British Empire at the time, but which has remained contested since its establishment in 1893. Why is this the case? While empires do not have borders that would limit their expansion, a nation-state such as Pakistan requires them. In 1947, in the name of treaty inheritance, Islamabad therefore decided to make the Durand Line its international border (in the sense of “border”). However, no regime in Afghanistan[2],  since the creation of Pakistan, has ever accepted it. Yet an international border can only function if both states that share it recognise it as such, and not as a mere “frontier” of empire[3]. As this condition has never been fulfilled, the Durand Line remains to this day a zone of conflict.

The Afghan refusal can be explained by the fact that this line divides the Pashtun space into two unequal parts. Only one third of the Pashtuns live on the Afghan side, even though “Afghanistan” etymologically means the “land of the Pashtuns”, while two thirds live on the Pakistani side. This division has long fuelled resentment among nationalist movements, which regard the Pashtun tribal areas of Pakistan as “usurped territories”, in the words of former Afghan President Mohammad Daoud Khan.

For Islamabad, the stakes are considerable. Pakistan fears that any challenge to the Durand Line could encourage separatist dynamics likely to undermine the country’s territorial integrity. The Pakistani state is indeed a highly composite entity. Beyond the Pashtun question, there is also that of Balochistan, where an independence insurgency remains active. From this perspective, securing the Afghan border appears as a strategic priority.

It is within this context that Pakistani support for the Taliban from their emergence in 1994, in order to end the Afghan civil war, must be understood. Islamabad even facilitated their seizure of power in Kabul in 1996, because the Taliban are all Pashtuns from the border regions, and the Pakistani government hoped that, out of gratitude, they would ultimately agree to recognise the Durand Line as an international border. Yet, despite Pakistan’s unwavering support, they never complied with this demand, until the fall of their regime following the American intervention of 2001. To this historical dimension was added, from 2005 onwards, the rise of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an additional and decisive actor in the deterioration of relations between the two countries. Not to be confused with the Afghan Taliban, the TTP emerged in Pakistan as a conglomerate of rebellious Pashtun tribes, including the Mehsud tribe of Waziristan, terrorist organisations banned in 2002 by Pakistani President Musharraf, as well as armed groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda[4].

From 2005 to 2014, the TTP plunged Pakistan into extreme violence. The movement was involved in attacks of unprecedented scale against the Pakistani state, targeting both senior political and military figures, the army’s general headquarters, naval bases, NATO convoys, as well as the civilian population. The TTP also claimed responsibility for the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in December 2007. Between December 2007 and December 2008, TTP attacks and the army’s aerial reprisals caused the deaths of 12,600 people in Pakistan, according to figures from the South Asia Terrorism Portal, or 35 deaths per day. Faced with such violence, the Pakistani army launched Operation Zarb-e-Azb in June 2014, deploying a force of 30,000 soldiers against TTP fighters in Waziristan, who then took refuge in Afghanistan, where they joined the “historical” Afghan Taliban, engaged against the occupying forces, a coalition of 38 countries led by the United States.

When the Taliban regained power in Kabul in 2021, they took into account the only truly binding commitment they had made in signing the Doha agreements on 29 February 2020: to sever all ties with terrorist parties that could threaten the security of the United States. Even today, the Afghan Taliban wage an uncompromising war against the Islamic State in Khorasan, as they are rivals, espousing different theologies and political objectives. As for the TTP, whose fighters were invited by Kabul to return to the border region from which they originate, it resumed its attacks against Pakistan. Convinced that the Afghan example can be replicated, it believes it can defeat the Pakistani state in the same way that the Afghan Taliban defeated a state supported by the most powerful army in the world, that of the United States and its allies. Faced with the resurgence of attacks and bombings along the Durand Line, Pakistani air forces regularly strike TTP positions inside Afghanistan, but went much further on 9 October and 27 February by bombing the capital, Kabul.

Thus, recent developments do not constitute a new conflict, but rather reactivate a long-standing dispute of which the Durand Line remains the core. The border dispute, which caused 4,000 deaths in 2025, continues to poison all attempts at mediation. Qatar and Turkey have tried in vain, despite three rounds of talks in Istanbul following the bombing of Kabul on 9 October. Moreover, numerous statements by ministers of the Taliban government in Kabul express the regime’s genuine tension regarding the Durand Line each time the Pakistani army strikes, and these statements are therefore perceived as support for TTP actions along the border. As early as 3 January 2022, the Taliban Minister of Information, Zabihullah Mujahid, declared in the Pakistani daily Dawn that the Durand Line was an “unresolved issue”. Much later, a few days after the first bombing of Kabul on 9 October, Deputy Interior Minister Nabi Omari described the Durand Line as an “imaginary line” and stated on 18 October on Ariana Television Network: “The old lands of Afghanistan that still lie on the Pakistani side could one day be recovered. By the will of Allah, these lands will return to us.”

For his part, Mohammad Yaqoub, son of Mullah Omar and Taliban Minister of Defence, stated that Afghanistan does not possess sophisticated technology to respond to aerial offensives, but that Afghans have never lost a war on the ground. Indeed, champions of “asymmetrical” warfare, Afghans have always prevailed over far superior powers: the British in the nineteenth century, the Soviets in the twentieth century, and the United States and their allies in the twenty-first century.

To what extent does this open conflict along the Durand Line have repercussions for the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan?

The repercussions are direct and immediate: exasperated, the Pakistani authorities decided in 2014 to send all Afghan refugees back to their country. This policy of “deportation” concerns not only individuals in an irregular situation, but also refugees holding official status. In two years, 2.5 million Afghans living in Pakistan are believed to have been forcibly returned to Afghanistan, according to the International Organization for Migration (a UN agency). Around 10,000 people cross the main border crossing points each week, notably at Chaman and Torkham. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), nearly 1.5 million Afghan refugees are still in Pakistan.

The brutality of these expulsions also lies in the fact that some of these refugees have little, if any, concrete ties left with Afghanistan, given the length of their stay in Pakistan, sometimes more than forty years, that is to say since the Soviet invasion of 1979. Their forced return therefore takes place under conditions of extreme vulnerability.

These forced returns exacerbate an already extremely fragile humanitarian situation. According to data from the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), around half of the Afghan population now depends on humanitarian aid. One Afghan in five suffers from hunger and nearly 3.5 million children are affected by acute malnutrition.

The international response remains insufficient. Humanitarian programmes for Afghanistan are funded at only 21%. This low level is explained by the difficulties faced by the international community in organising aid in a country governed by the Taliban, a regime that no UN member state (apart from Russia last July) has yet recognised.

To this food and social crisis is added a major environmental crisis. According to recent United Nations data, Kabul’s groundwater levels have fallen by around thirty metres in ten years. The Afghan capital could thus become one of the first major cities in the world to exhaust its water reserves.

Which actors are involved at the regional level in the conflict between Islamabad and Kabul, and what are their strategic interests?

The conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan takes place within a particularly complex regional environment. Pakistan finds itself caught between two major sources of tension: to the east, the conflict with India over Kashmir; to the west, persistent tensions with Afghanistan along the Durand Line.

India is closely monitoring developments in Afghanistan. New Delhi seeks to develop economic corridors enabling it to access Central Asia without passing through Pakistan. In this context, India has invested in the Iranian port of Chabahar. Located around one hundred kilometres from the Pakistani port of Gwadar, Chabahar represents a strategic alternative for India. Road infrastructure has been developed to connect this port to Afghanistan and then to Central Asia, notably towards Uzbekistan. The current destabilisation of Iran is placing all these Indian prospects on hold.

China also plays a major role in the region. Beijing supports Pakistan and is developing an ambitious infrastructure project within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative. This project notably includes the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), linking the Chinese city of Kashgar to the Pakistani port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea. Chinese investment in this project is estimated at around 65 billion dollars. However, this corridor faces numerous security challenges, as it is supposed to cross some of the most insurgency-prone areas: the Pashtun tribal belt, a stronghold of the TTP, and Balochistan.

Major regional issues thus appear closely intertwined. Hostility between India and Pakistan, tensions between Kabul and Islamabad, the Iranian alternative which may no longer function due to the war currently affecting it, persistent instability in Afghanistan and climate-related disasters (the extremely rapid melting of the world’s largest mountain glaciers, annual flooding, etc.) all contribute to maintaining an extremely precarious regional environment.

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[1] Plural of “taleb”; “the Taliban” originally referred to students from the madrasas of the border regions.

[2] The Durand Line was successively not recognised by King Zahir Shah (1933–73), President Daoud (1973–78), the four communist leaders from 1978 to 1992, nor even by the Taliban from 1996 to 2001.

[3] Cited in Dupree 1994, 427, Letter No. 77, 1896 between the London Foreign Office and the Raj administration: “The tribes between the administrative border and the Durand Line were buffer to a buffer, and the line had none of the rigidity of other international borders.”

[4]  Among these Al-Qaeda-affiliated armed groups are the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and the East Turkestan Islamic Party (Uyghur).