Pak-Afghan retaliatory attacks are at the height of tension

Last Updated on March 24, 2024 3:04 pm

Md Khayrul Bashar, Senior Reporter:

There is tension between the two neighboring countries due to counter-attacks by Pakistan and Afghanistan. Aljazeera reported this information in a report on Monday (March 18).

Muhammad Amir Rana, an Islamabad-based security analyst and director of the Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies (PIPS), said it is not unusual for the Pakistani Taliban or other armed groups to launch attacks during the month of Ramadan.

He said the military has adopted a policy of retaliating against any threat. Afghan Taliban are known as supporters of TTP (Pakistan Taliban). There are examples of their own members being involved in attacks inside Pakistan.

A Western diplomat stationed in Islamabad told Al Jazeera that decades of relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan appear to have changed course. One thing is certain, he said, that the relationship between Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban has fractured. The Pak government thought they had made a prudent investment. But reality speaks differently.

Since the Taliban government came to power in 2021, relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have been deteriorating. Tensions between the two Muslim neighbors continued to rise. In April 2022, Kabul reported that 47 people were killed in a Pakistani airstrike in the eastern part of the country.

Pakistan’s foreign ministry said the attack was carried out on Monday morning targeting armed groups hiding in the border area. Sources in Pakistan’s military and foreign ministries told Al Jazeera that Pakistani forces carried out retaliatory strikes targeting the hideouts of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) or Pakistani Taliban commanders. Because this organization is conducting and supporting terrorist activities inside Pakistan from across the border.

However, last Saturday (March 16) seven Pakistani soldiers were killed in a suicide bomb attack on a military post in the North Waziristan district of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, bordering Afghanistan. The newly formed terror group Jaish-e-Fursan-e-Muhammad claimed responsibility for the attack. The organization is headed by Pakistani Taliban leader Hafiz Gul Bahadur. Security analysts say the attack is linked to Monday’s attack in Pakistan.

Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Asif said that armed groups are using Afghan soil to carry out terrorist attacks in Pakistan. Most of the terrorism against us is being directed from Afghanistan.

However, the Afghan Taliban government has been repeatedly denying such an allegation of Islamabad. They say Pakistani warplanes have attacked civilian homes in Paktika and Khost provinces. At least eight people were killed in this attack. Among them are five women and three children.

Later, the Ministry of Defense of Afghanistan informed that on Monday, firing was fired at Pakistan’s targets across the border. According to Pakistan’s Kurram District Hospital Administration, at least four Pakistani civilians were injured in cross-border shelling.

A Pakistani official told Al Jazeera that the mortar shelling started in the morning. It lasts for several hours. We received four injured civilians in a district hospital. All of them are stable. They have been treated and discharged from the hospital. On the other hand, military sources in Kurram district said that at least three soldiers were injured due to firing.