Afghanistan’s Taliban government described the incident as a blatant violation of international principles and launched retaliatory attacks.
Pakistan’s strikes were deliberately aimed at Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militants, who seek to overthrow the Pakistani government and establish an Islamic state.
A pro-Taliban media outlet claimed that Afghanistan’s strikes killed 19 Pakistani troops and three Afghan civilians.
What does this conflict mean for the two nations, and how will it impact India?
To discuss this, CNBC-TV18 spoke to Vivek Katju, former secretary of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), and KC Singh, former Indian Envoy to Iran.
Below are the edited excerpts:
Q: How bad could things get for Pakistan this year regarding the conflict between the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Pakistani army?
Katju: The relationship between the Afghan Taliban and Pakistan has not always been cozy. In fact, during the 1990s, when the Taliban was in power in Kabul, the relationship between Kabul, Rawalpindi, and Islamabad was complicated and uneasy. After the Taliban were ousted from Kabul in 2001, Pakistan began using them as an instrument to pursue its interests in Afghanistan, leading to a closer, though still uneasy, relationship. What we are witnessing now is a return to the traditional dynamic that has historically existed between Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is not something new.
There was a period after the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan in 2021 when the Pakistanis believed the Taliban would be extremely grateful for all the support Pakistan had provided over the previous 20 years. But gratitude is not a common feature in international relations. This is what we are seeing today. The year 2025 is likely to bring difficulties in the Pakistan-Afghanistan relationship.
Q: How do you think the situation there could impact India?
Singh: India has been reaching out to the Taliban, which naturally should not have been expected, considering the historically strained relationship we’ve had in the past. However, sensing the differences in the nationalism the Taliban is displaying and the degree of independence it is trying to assert, India has found some space to engage. Otherwise, Pakistan’s main grievance is that they expected the Taliban to work with them to finish off the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP). That was the least they could have expected from the Taliban.
Now, the Taliban either are unable or unwilling to do this, because their fight is also with the Islamic State. There’s a lot happening within Afghanistan that may not be visible, because the Taliban’s primary domestic enemy today is the Islamic State.
So, do the TTP have links to the Islamic State? Are the fighters moving between the two? There is an internal dynamic at play, which is why I think the Afghans are either unable or unwilling to take action against the TTP. Unless this is addressed, Pakistan feels betrayed, because the TTP is fueling terrorism in Pakistan, particularly in the tribal areas and beyond.
You can’t say there’s a direct link, but having Imran Khan—a Pathan—being jailed and pushed there by the army is not very helpful, because he has significant support in Pakistan’s tribal areas, which are connected to Afghanistan. The Durand Line has never been accepted by the Afghans, and Pakistan has been building a fence, trying to de-link the Afghan Pashtuns from their own Pashtuns.
It’s a complicated situation, and I think the Pakistani military will find it very difficult to handle. The issue is that Pakistan has not fully realised that they cannot expect a group that has ruled Afghanistan for centuries to become a Pakistani proxy. To an extent, that was fine, but now their sense of nationalism is surfacing, and they want independence of thought and action.
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