‘Open war’: fighting has intensified on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border
Fighting on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border has intensified. One Pakistani minister has described it as a state of “open war”. And Pakistan has hit the Afghan capital Kabul with airstrikes.
Afghan forces launched attacks across the British-created Durand line on 26 February. And Pakistan has called the Taliban regime — which replaced the US-led occupation in 2021 — illegitimate and accused it of harbouring militants.
Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said on 27 February:
Afghan soil is not being used; but, the Afghan Taliban regime is fully aligned with these terrorists and is completely backing these terrorists.
Al Jazeera reported on 27 February:
Pakistan launched air strikes on Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, as well as on Kandahar and Paktia, early on Friday. The attacks targeted Taliban military installations as Islamabad declared “open war” on the group’s government, in the most serious military confrontation between the two neighbours in years.
One Kabul resident described her terror:
Then we heard gunfire. When we looked out of our apartment window, we saw bullet-like flames going up in the sky.
Al Jazeera said the airstrikes:
came hours after Afghan forces launched coordinated cross-border attacks on Pakistani military positions in six border provinces late on Thursday. Kabul claimed 55 Pakistani soldiers were killed and 19 outposts captured.
Border war
Border fighting broke out in October 2025. A subsequent Turkey and Qatar-brokered ceasefire has now broken down.
The origins of the fighting are complicated. Ahram Online reported:
Islamabad argues that the authorities in Kabul, led by the Taliban, have failed to curb the activities of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, a separate but ideologically aligned group that has intensified attacks inside Pakistan since 2021.
The Taliban deny this is the case. Kabul-based political analyst Obaidullah Baheer said:
Pakistan claimed that it was doing that in response to TTP attacks based on the bogus claim that the Taliban are supporting the TTP, an insurgent group operating within Pakistan.
Drop Site News posted a timeline of the breakdown in diplomatic relations since January 2026:
Lead-up: January – Mid-February 2026
▪️Early January: Pakistan warns that Afghanistan is becoming a hub for foreign militants.
▪️February 6: A suicide bombing at a Shia mosque in Islamabad kills 31–36 worshippers. The attack is claimed by ISKP, but Pakistan blames the Afghan…
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) February 27, 2026
The Pakistan has also banned personal drones after Afghan forces used unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in their attack:
The ban is effective nationwide immediately and will remain in place until further directives are issued. All provincial governments and chief secretaries have been asked to ensure strict enforcement of the directive.
Vast US arsenal
A vast arsenal of US military equipment and weaponry was left behind in 2021. Those weapons are now fuelling the war. As the Canary reported on 4 February:
those weapons have flooded neighbouring Pakistan
The Foundation for Economic Education broke down some of the numbers involved. They said the giant arsenal included:
includes up to 22,174 Humvee vehicles, nearly 1,000 armored vehicles, 64,363 machine guns, and 42,000 pick-up trucks and SUVs.
There were mind-boggling amounts of small arms — and even artillery:
the list of allegedly abandoned weaponry includes up to 358,530 assault rifles, 126,295 pistols, and nearly 200 artillery units.
CNN reported that the border region holds vast quantities of copper and other minerals and metals which the US craves:
Pakistan says there is much more wealth beneath its soil –– an estimated $8 trillion in copper, lithium, cobalt, gold, antimony and other critical minerals.
This reality has:
oiled an unlikely friendship with US President Donald Trump, who has put mineral acquisition at the heart of US foreign policy
Pakistan and Afghanistan’s colonial underpinnings
The colonial nature of the conflict zone can’t be ignored either. National Geographic describes the Durand Line as:
part of a long history of colonizing countries establishing borders that serve their own political purposes while ignoring the cultures and ethnicities of the people living there.
As Ahram Online explained:
The roots of the crisis trace back to 1893, when British diplomat Sir Mortimer Durand signed an agreement with Afghan ruler Abdur Rahman Khan to demarcate a frontier between British India and Afghanistan. That line split Pashtun tribal lands between two political entities.
After independence in 1947, Pakistan:
inherited the Durand Line as an international boundary under the principle of state succession. Successive Afghan governments, however, avoided formally recognizing it as a permanent border. The dispute has simmered for decades, occasionally flaring but rarely disappearing.
The neighbours view the border very differently:
Pakistan views the border as legally settled and central to its territorial integrity. Afghanistan’s position has historically been more ambiguous, shaped by ethnic ties, nationalist sentiment, and resistance to what many Afghans see as a colonial imposition.
This explosive combination of competing territorial visions and competition for vast mineral resources is compounded by colonial history and the presence on both sides of the border of vast arsenals of lost American weapons. And ordinary people of the region aren’t without agency, yet to some degree they remain hostage to imperialisms both old and new.
Featured image via the Canary
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Status update for folks:
Genocidal shithole israel has bombed Iran in an unprovoked attack, in a joint operation with zionist pedophile Donald Trump who remarks that ‘some Americans may die, but that is a sacrifice he is willing to make’.
Iran has responded by bombing Bahrain, israel, Dubai, the UAE, US airbases, US navy, with American casualties and hits on the USS Abraham Lincoln reported. Events are still developing and only real time feeds can be seen on Telegram.
Tomahawk missiles have hit Iran after violently bloodthirsty israel tried to assassinate various leaders in Iran, and per zionist incompetence, failed.
Portions of crypto got liquidated in response, and zionist pedophile Keir Starmer has announced he wants to “protect” British “interest” in the region, by which he means he, as a zionist diddler, wishes to protect his zionist shithole country of israel from the consequences of their actions involving an unjust war they provoked. Touching really, sheer wonder why the Epstein pedo diddler man hasn’t yet been received from office.
Looking forward to Trump’s long winded diatribe on Truth Social explaining why defending a genocidal shithole full of pedophiles is in the best interests of American taxpayers. Oh, and no mention of israel genociding Palestinians, of course, can’t say the quiet part out loud.
Back to yer usual programming. Oh, and, top up your fuel tanks, oil crisis might soon follow.
As an added extra on Afghan-Pakistan war, PRC has economic ties to both nations, and has sold arms to Pakistan (and maybe Afghanistan, I do not know, have not done research).
China wants to protect its economic investment in building infrastructure and extracting mineral resources from region (everything from coal to rare earth metals to gold and gemstones) so it wants bambing to stop, thus it wants peace.
On the other hand, PRC has not been in armed conflict since war with Vietnam in 1979. PLA has no combat experience. Chinese weapons have not been totally proven in action. World military experts regard China as a bit of a paper tiger. China sold advanced fighters to Pakistan and these were recently used in action against India. The Chinese aircraft were better than best Indian aircraft. This led to global reassessment of Chinese military technology and increased interest in buying from PRC. However, as Dubai Airshow November 2025 showed, buyers were still cautious. They will buy small cheap tech e.g. drones from China but not £billions fighters. MbS of Saudi Arabia may have considered PRC aircraft but he bought USA fighters (F-35) with proven track record as they are used by Israel in Middle East conflicts. All this means that China has potential interest in continuing warfare by Pakistan but only if it serves as shop-window for Chinese products.
Right now, it seems the war is ‘asymmetric’ i.e. Pakistan using advanced weapons and professional military against relatively untrained Pashtun Islamists armed with relatively low tech resources. This is not the same kind of war as Pakistan had (has) with India. Will advanced Chinese military equipment be used against Islamists? Can this conflict be used to sell Chinese technology? If not then China will push for peace. Otherwise, China has to do a calculation about how much it loses via damage to its Afghan mining investments versus how much it gains via Pakistan demonstrating how good Chinese technology is when used by experienced airforce. That is a cynical economic calculus.
As of now, I think China will be more interested in protecting its mines than gambling that Pakistan will use advanced fighter planes against insurgents with pop guns or that doing so will be a selling point for other buyers of fighters. I expect China to ask for calm in public and in private to be screaming down the phone to Pakistan demanding they do not bomb any Chinese assets and screaming at the Afghan Taliban demanding they rein-in the Pakistani Taliban so the bombing stops. We will see how good Chinese backstage diplomacy is.
Meanwhile, what this says about Chinese ability to, for example, invade Taiwan or come to aid of Iran is that PLA is designed to be a defence force for suppressing uprisings in China against Communist rule or invasions from enemies of the regime and is not designed to go on adventures and fight overseas like imperialist armies, it has been disrupted by purges of senior offices, has no battlefield experience in half-century, and has technology which is recognised as good but not yet thought to be good enough to beat best Western technology, especially when used by states with battle-hardened military such as Israel. I think this military weakness will make China more willing to supply military resources to anyone involved in battle so it can prove the technology thus willing to keep Afghan/Pakistan or India/Pakistan fights going if it is useful to China. But doing so can only remove doubt about the technology, it cannot remove doubt about PLA per se since its pilots have only flown in exercises not in combat. What will really raise the stakes is if Chinese pilots ever take part in combat, flying their own technology in real warfare, and win any conflict. That would potentially make Chinese a real tiger not paper tiger. To prevent this, opponents like US would go all out to defeat these Chinese battle pioneers. China knows this, China recognises there is usually more to gain by not fighting directly but just supplying arms to others. This rationale influences how China manages e.g. Afghan/Pakistan conflict or how it aids Iran.
USA-led attack on Iran has only missiles and aircraft, it has no troops. There can be no regime change in Iran without ground forces. USA strategy (if they have one) assumes Iranians, inspired by bombing, would create an unarmed uprising to topple the regime. Iranians would be foot soldiers and be the ones who die in large numbers. If this does not happen or the locals rise up and create armed resistance to US aggression as happened in Iraq, then we are at beginning of major regional war – an existential contest for Israel and Iran. If this is not a brief exchange of missiles but start of protracted war, would China see benefit in sending troops to aid Iran? It would gain essential battleground experience for PLA but US would respond with maximum force. That would make Iran a proxy war used to settle fate of Taiwan and determine global power hierarchy. That might be a welcome alternative to Pacific war for both rivals. Fight it out but not on our own doorsteps. But could they keep the war limited to Middle East?
Who would win a proxy war in Iran? US has very little stockpile of weapons but a trained military and fierce ally in Israel which might overcome local population hostility and force regime change in Iran. China and Iran have stockpile of resources, some technology as good or maybe better than best US technology, less experienced military, and probably no more local support than US-Israel for forcing regime changes. Could they fend off US aggression, turn the tables, and force regime change in Israel? To me, it looks like an impossible task either way. This is a war no one can win. It looks even more insane than Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Just another adventure by evil oligarchs, frankly. All I can be certain about is that civilians will be killed in cold blood for no good reason. I say damn them all, and God help the innocent men, women, children trapped in this man-made hell.
The only reason Bush and Blair invaded Iraq was so they could take focus and attention away from Afghanistan because they did not want the Taliban to be eliminated (the Taliban had unconditionally surrendered in Dec 2001 but Bush and Rumsfeld wouldn’t accept their surrender, and the Bush admin had OBL cornered in Tora Bora but they allowed the Pakistanis to safely evacuate OBL to Pakistan instead of the Bush admin killing or capturing OBL).
The defeat/elimination of the Taliban would have meant the end of Pakistan (the Afghan part of Pakistan re-joining Afghanistan, and the Indian part of Pakistan re-joining India with the support of the international community), which Bush and Blair opposed.
Within a month and a half of the Iraq invasion, the US and UK had achieved total victory, but Bush deliberately did things which led to an insurgency in Iraq, an insurgency he could have easily crushed anytime he wanted to within the first 2 and a half years of that war, but he deliberately allowed to fester.
For this reason, in people’s heart of hearts, people think the invasion of Iraq was the right thing to do, even though they may pretend otherwise. When they pretend otherwise, they are simply being disingenuous.
Regarding the first 4 years of the war of terror, journalists were totally complicit and they did not do their job of holding Bush to account by asking why America had not and is not crushing the terrorists already and why America is giving them breathing space to fester instead.