In the image
The Durand Line, the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan
In late February 2026, Pakistan went to war with Afghanistan by bombing positions held by the Pakistani Taliban and the Islamic State-Khorasan Province near its border, in response to previous cross-border attacks by these militias. Pakistan accuses the Afghan Taliban government of supporting them. The war, now a low-intensity conflict, illustrates the paradox of a state fighting its former proxy.
For decades, Pakistan’s relationship with Afghanistan has been shaped by shifting strategic priorities, ideological alignments, and the enduring legacy of colonial borders. What began as a confrontational relationship has evolved, first into support and now into all-out war. Despite Pakistan’s commitment to continue fighting in Afghanistan, it has been quick to forget its past as one of the Afghan Taliban’s main supporters—a policy that has produced unintended consequences. The same Taliban movement once cultivated as a strategic asset has become a source of instability, empowering militant networks that now threaten Pakistan itself. With the fighting seemingly nowhere near ending, the current conflict reveals not only the fragility of Afghan-Pakistani relations but also the long-term risks of proxy warfare and geopolitical opportunism.
Background on Pakistan-Afghanistan Relations
Pakistani-Afghan relations have been consistently marked by cycles of tension. One of the main points of contention between these two countries to this day has been the existence of the Durand Line, an artificial colonial border drawn by the British in 1893. This border divides the Pashtun ethnic group between the two countries, leading to nearly a century of serious military hostilities, partner disputes, and geopolitical clashes between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Until the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Afghanistan’s relationship with Pakistan remained contentious.
It was not until the Soviet invasion that Islamabad’s attitude toward its neighbor began to change, as it recognized that the geopolitical landscape of the region had fundamentally shifted. The Pakistani government then began providing both material and political support to Afghan resistance forces within Afghanistan, raised the issue in various international forums, and became the frontline state in the United States’ covert policy there. However, there were many resistance groups (mujahideen) fighting against the Soviet occupation, and Pakistan was faced with a difficult choice: Which group should it support among them all? Ultimately, Pakistan made a choice that has defined its foreign policy to this day: its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) began providing support to a new Islamist organization called the Taliban, even going so far as to train its founder, Mullah Omar, at one of its anti-Soviet training camps.
By 2001, Pakistan was providing the Taliban regime in Kabul with hundreds of advisers and experts to operate its tanks, aircraft, and artillery, and thousands of Pakistani Pashtuns to serve in its infantry. Pakistan supplied the oil needed to fuel the Taliban’s war machine. After the terrorist attacks in the U.S. on September 11 of that year, as Pakistan positioned itself as one of Washington’s main allies in the Islamic world, it continued to support the Taliban, even welcoming its exiled leaders once the U.S. invaded Afghanistan. From there, Pakistan increased its control and influence over the Taliban, providing the organization with critical aid and assistance that it used to resume the war inside Afghanistan in 2004.
However, there were some limits to Pakistan’s control over the Afghan Taliban. Even when Mullah Omar was in power in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, he refused to recognize the legitimacy of the Durand Line. Furthermore, the Afghan Taliban provides assistance to the Pakistani Taliban—which was formed after Islamabad’s offensive against al-Qaeda on its own soil—and which is engaged in an insurgency against the Pakistani army and is responsible for dozens of terrorist attacks inside Pakistan.
Overview of the Current Conflict
Although Pakistan and Afghanistan have seen an improvement in their relations over the past few decades, relations have deteriorated since the beginning of this year. The current conflict began in February when Pakistan launched airstrikes on key Afghan locations (Kabul and Kandahar), claiming it was retaliation for the Taliban government’s harboring of the Pakistani Taliban (as well as separatists from the Pakistani region of Balochistan), which had carried out terrorist attacks in Pakistan in the preceding weeks. This“open war,” as Islamabad calls it, is an ironic twist of fate. Pakistan had long provided support and a safe haven for the Afghan Taliban, using them to protect its interests in the region, only for the Afghan Taliban to break away and begin sponsoring the Pakistani Taliban, one of Islamabad’s main enemies.
Nonetheless, attacking its more powerful neighbor could prove to be a misstep for Afghanistan, as it is a landlocked country almost entirely dependent on Pakistan’s coastline for transit trade. Pakistan has cut off trade with Afghanistan since October 2025, which has greatly affected businesses in Afghanistan and negatively impacted its already struggling economy. Although the war has entered a phase of low-intensity conflict and has seen two brief ceasefires, Afghanistan faces even more devastating consequences if the situation persists.
Afghanistan conducts significant trade with India (valued at around USD 1 billion) via the Iranian port of Chahbahar, one of whose terminals has been financed and managed by India, which could provide an alternative to the affected trade routes through Pakistan. However, Iran is currently embroiled in its own conflict with Israel and the U.S., which has led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. It is unlikely that India will be able to trade with Afghanistan through the Port of Chahbahar, leaving Afghanistan in a precarious situation.
International implications
The current war between Pakistan and Afghanistan could easily have regional repercussions, especially as it pertains to Pakistan’s other neighbor, India. This conflict could lead to a potential escalation of the longstanding India-Pakistan conflict, which dominates Pakistan’s foreign policy. India has recently developed closer ties with Afghanistan, and New Delhi could seek to strengthen these relations in order to counter Pakistan on this issue; this, in turn, could lead to India’s direct involvement in the war, resulting in a nuclear standoff with potentially catastrophic consequences.
Pakistan also accuses Afghanistan of harboring and supporting Baloch separatists in Pakistan, another issue that could draw India into the conflict. There is also some evidence to support India’s longstanding interests in Balochistan. In a national Independence Day speech at Delhi’s network in August, Indian Prime Minister Modi extended his greetings to the “people of Balochistan, Gilgit, and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.” This speech understandably caused outrage in Islamabad, where it was viewed as an infringement on Pakistani sovereignty and seemed to confirm their long-standing claims that India had been supporting insurgencies in Balochistan and elsewhere in Pakistan. This speech also came after Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval issued threats to Islamabad regarding an escalation of violence, saying, “If you carry out one more Mumbai [attack], you will lose Balochistan.”
If India does not seek to become directly involved in insurgencies in Pakistan, it could seek to counterbalance Pakistan in the region and disrupt the ongoing China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which, although it has the potential to stabilize Pakistan by developing its economy, could also bring China closer to the region and allow it to exert influence over Pakistan’s domestic and international affairs.
Furthermore, a point of contention between Pakistan and Afghanistan is Afghanistan’s aforementioned refusal to accept the Durand Line, which divides the Pashtun population between two sovereign states. Pashtun separatist groups could be incited by the confusion and chaos of the current conflict to commit acts of violence and launch insurgencies in order to advance their goal of creating a Pashtun nation-state. Therefore, a full-scale war between Pakistan and Afghanistan could also lead to the resurgence of separatist movements in both countries (since there are also Pashtun separatists in Afghanistan), but especially within Pakistan.
Over the past few years, Pakistan has been strengthening its ties with the United States, its ally since the Cold War, when Islamabad was one of Washington’s main supporters in the fight against communism. In this vein, Pakistan has also been trying to change its image from a harborer of terrorists to a neutral mediator, as exemplified by its recent eagerness to broker peace talks between Iran and the U.S. Pakistan’s recent strengthening of ties with the U.S. could further worsen the situation in Afghanistan; Afghanistan has been opposed to the United States since the Taliban first took power in 1996. These relations place Pakistan on a fundamentally different ideological plane than its neighbor, aligning it with liberal democracy in an attempt to distance itself from its past ties to Afghanistan’s current regime. However,
Pakistan’s new image also poses a threat to itself. By engaging in open war with Afghanistan, Pakistan undermines its desired status as a friend and mediator to the West.
The Paradox
The ongoing conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan underscores the paradox at the heart of Islamabad’s regional strategy. In seeking advantages over its rivals, Pakistan has inadvertently empowered forces that have gradually slipped beyond its control, turning from allies into adversaries. Today’s tensions are not an isolated phenomenon, but the culmination of decades of policy choices rooted in short-term security calculations. As the risk of regional escalation grows, drawing in actors such as India, Iran, and even global powers, the stakes extend far beyond bilateral disputes. However, Pakistan’s foreign policy has almost always been focused on India, and this enduring preoccupation may ultimately limit its ability to navigate the complex and dangerous situation constantly evolving along its western border.