WE cannot wish Afghanistan away. It is an old story. It began in 1947 when Afghanistan was the only country to have voted against Pakistan’s UN membership. Afghanistan was then ruled by the Barakzais, the king being Mohammad Zahir Shah. People of my age had to witness the shenanigans of this incompetent monarch for 40 years. Close to the Soviets during the Cold War, he earned India’s gratitude by inventing the Pakhtunistan stunt. However, he was ousted from power in 1973 by his cousin and prime minister Mohammad Daud Khan, who abolished the monarchy. Daud and his family were murdered by the People’s Democratic Party in April 1978.
A lot has happened since then, with world powers involved in the abattoir Afghanistan has become. It constitutes a tale as fascinating and bloody as the history of 19th-century Prussia. Pakistan’s problems in dealing with Kabul stem from the Afghan leaders’ fixation on what they consider to be their ‘lost’ territory. Field Marshal Ayub Khan once remarked in frustration that Afghanistan wanted territory as far as Karachi.
A major factor in the Afghan rulers’ thinking stemmed from Ahmad Shah Abdali’s victory over the Maratha army in the third battle of Panipat (1761). While returning home, he made clear to ‘native’ kings in territory in the Indus region that he considered them his vassal. Ultimately, the British got the Afghans out of what now constitutes the Balochistan province and most of what is now KP, making it Pakistan’s responsibility to take care of the long 2,600-kilometre border.
As was expected, India didn’t fail to exploit the anti-Pakistan sentiments that some sections of Afghan politicians harboured. During the Cold War, Afghan rulers would frequently look towards the Soviet Union for help, and since Pakistan was often a member of US-led military alliances, Kabul sought Indian support because New Delhi claimed to be neutral in the East-West tensions. Thus, an unwritten tripartite Kabul-Delhi-Moscow axis developed to bully Pakistan. Ultimately, it was not Pakistan that suffered; it was Afghanistan that was occupied, exploited, looted, stripped of sovereignty and reduced to mass poverty, with millions fleeing to Pakistan to seek shelter, food and peace. Thousands managed to acquire Pakistani nationality, run restaurants and businesses and live well.
The two capitals support terrorist strikes against Pakistan.
Yet, in spite of all that Pakistan has done for Afghanistan, rulers in Kabul unabashedly support such terrorist groups as the BLA and TTP. Both are believed to have links with New Delhi. Both use their safe havens in Afghanistan to plan and launch attacks against Pakistani military and civilian vehicles. The weaponry the TTP possesses includes rifle-propelled rockets and grenades and night vision glasses. While much of these constitute weaponry left behind by the hastily exiting Nato forces in Afghanistan, many are widely believed to have been supplied by India.
The attack in June on a Rangers’ facility in Karachi, which caused three fatalities among the personnel, testifies to the anti-Pakistan fanaticism that has gripped Kabul’s rulers. It seems that even though Afghanistan is one of the world’s most poverty-stricken countries and isolated diplomatically, it has enough resources to make war on Pakistan and fly drones into it. As Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said recently, the Kabul rulers were “funding terrorism”.
Pakistan is justified in its strikes inside Afghanistan where terrorists are trained to attack sensitive civilian and military targets in Pakistan. A former Pakistani envoy to Afghanistan, Asif Durrani, indicated that Pakistan’s strike against targets inside Afghanistan would continue as long as the TTP terrorists did not stop launching attacks against this country.
Speaking to Afghanistan International, Mr Durrani said that “tensions and conflict bet-ween the Afghan Taliban and Pakistan would continue until the threat posed by TTP was eliminated”. He said that Islamabad was “acting in accordance with international law because it faced a direct terrorist threat”.
He also pointed out that “the UN Charter clearly recognises the right of states to respond when threatened by terrorism” and that Pakistan had relied on Article 51 of the Charter, “to justify its strikes” because the Kabul regime “has failed to prevent TTP militants from operating”.
Where the casualties reportedly caused by the strikes inside Afghanistan are concerned, it was rightly pointed out that the TTP militants did “not live in isolated bases but instead operate from residential areas, making such locations unavoidable targets during military operations”. Pakistan must put all the pressure it can on the Afghan Taliban to rein in the terrorist groups operating from their territory.
The writer is Dawn’s External Ombudsman and an author.
Published in Dawn, August 17th, 2026