On the night of Oct. 9-10, Pakistan conducted a series of air strikes on locations within Afghanistan. Relations between the two countries have been troubled for years over Pakistani allegations that Afghanistan offers a safe haven for anti-Pakistan terror and militant groups. But these strikes mark a significant escalation in hostilities.
To understand what just happened, Good Authority editor Christopher Clary checked in with Asfandyar Mir, senior fellow for South Asia at the Stimson Center. Mir has written several peer-reviewed studies on drone strikes and Pakistani strategy toward counterinsurgency and counterterrorism. His insights, lightly edited for clarity and length, are below.
Christopher Clary: What do we know about the escalating tensions between these two South Asian countries? Where within Afghanistan did Pakistan carry out strikes – and why?
Asfandyar Mir: On the night of Oct. 9, Pakistan appears to have carried out strikes in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul. The Taliban is acknowledging but downplaying the incident, but my sense from available reporting is that Pakistan hit a convoy of the anti-Pakistan terror group, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). There have been claims on social media that Pakistan targeted TTP’s top leader, Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud, in that strike, but by most accounts he survived the attack, though we don’t have clear confirmation on the identity of those killed. Separately, Pakistan also carried out strikes in the Barmal district of eastern Afghanistan’s Paktika province, a known TTP stronghold.
Why did the strikes happen now? I mean that both in the sense of what triggered these strikes in the immediate sense, but also whether there is a deeper context that helps explain the strikes.
The immediate trigger for these strikes appears to be a series of attacks in western Pakistan in September and October, which resulted in over 100 Pakistani security forces fatalities. Pakistani security forces losses in 2025 from anti-Pakistan militants are on track to be the highest ever – and there is a genuine case that this is a result of militants being able to organize in and operate from Taliban-provided sanctuaries.
More generally, despite a long history of Pakistan backing the Taliban both in its formation and later in its insurgency against the United States, Pakistan has developed deep animosity toward the Taliban since their return to power in August 2021 – largely because of their state support for anti-Pakistan groups in Afghanistan, particularly the TTP. When Pakistan asks the Taliban to rein in the TTP, the Taliban either urge Pakistan to negotiate and make concessions to the TTP, or claim they cannot control the TTP. Sometimes the Taliban does both. Over time, the Pakistani leadership has come to believe the Taliban are deliberately weaponizing the TTP and other anti-Pakistan militants, either to expand a Taliban-like regime into Pakistan or to enable an allied Pashtun entity to take over northwest Pakistan. In an added twist, India has also pursued a normalization of ties with the Taliban, just as Pakistan-Taliban ties have nosedived. This contributes to the Pakistani inference that the Taliban are pursuing a hostile agenda against Pakistan, in coordination with their archenemy India.
My sense is that Pakistan has been upset with Afghanistan for several years regarding these allegations of anti-Pakistan activity emanating from Afghan soil – but this is a departure from Pakistan’s prior coercive efforts. Is that correct? How much of an escalation is this compared to past measures Pakistan has taken against Afghanistan?
Pakistan has carried out air strikes intermittently in parts of eastern Afghanistan where the TTP has strongholds. The strike in Kabul, however, crosses a threshold. It’s the first attack in Afghanistan’s capital. Violation of airspace alone has been a sore point in Taliban internal domestic politics and Afghan politics more broadly – and with Pakistan, such events trigger considerable emotion. A strike in Kabul, therefore, is doubly humiliating for the Taliban.
Will the Taliban seek to counter-punch? An initial retaliation by Taliban forces over the weekend included targeting Pakistani border outposts. Tactically, the Taliban seems likely to continue enabling allied groups like the TTP, which can lead to continued violence. The Taliban also believe that Pakistan has internal political challenges and geopolitical vulnerabilities that they can exploit. Yet there is an unspoken fear of Pakistan in Taliban and Afghan politics, which could induce caution on the scope of escalation.
Rhetoric notwithstanding, leaders within the Taliban recognize that governments that end up on the wrong side of Pakistan do not survive in Afghanistan. That’s the takeaway from the past five decades of history. In line with that, the Pakistani leadership has gestured toward a punishment campaign drawing on political and military tools if the Taliban continue to back anti-Pakistan militants like the TTP, which has the ring of a regime change threat. So the Taliban leadership may just stick to the status quo, and aim to support the TTP and allied groups without triggering major Pakistani counter-measures that could destabilize the regime in Afghanistan. It’s a dangerous game and I am not sure it is a game that is ultimately sustainable.
In some of your prior research you identify two concepts – legibility and speed – to help explain the effectiveness of counterterrorism strikes. As I understand it, legibility means the ability of a country to understand the civilian population within which an armed group operates, while speed measures how quickly the government can gather new information about these armed groups and use it to attack them. Do you think that framework applies here? And, if so, does Pakistan have sufficient legibility and speed for success in Afghanistan?
I believe the legibility-and-speed of exploitation framework may apply to Pakistan’s prospects in these ongoing operations against the TTP and the kinds of strategies it may be able to pursue.
If Pakistan is pursuing a campaign of large-scale coercive pressure to alter the TTP’s political aim of regime change in Pakistan – or degrade the TTP and other anti-Pakistan militants operating in Afghanistan – it requires very high levels of legibility and speed of exploitation. Pakistan lacks full-spectrum legibility inside Afghanistan, but it does maintain valuable intelligence and monitoring capacities. The TTP and other allied militants are spread out in multiple areas of Afghanistan with thousands of fighters and support elements, concealed within the population. Pakistan is aggressive in its human intelligence operations in Afghanistan – with many networks and relationships there to generate leads on high-value TTP individuals and other important nodes from time to time. It also has overheard surveillance platforms, which provide some reach. However, Pakistan does not possess the scale of aerial surveillance, signals-interception capacity, or the analytic infrastructure required for sustained, large-scale monitoring and penetration of the geographies where the TTP is active.
On the speed side, Pakistan has some options. It has a large and growing fleet of unmanned aerial systems and fighter jets with air-to-ground precision strike technology, and several air bases proximate to areas where the TTP operates. In the past, Pakistani military and intelligence had compartmentalized operations, often failing to share intelligence while it was fresh. But now, there seem to be fewer political and institutional barriers to sharing intelligence across the different parts of Pakistan’s security establishment – or acting on that intelligence, even across the border. Even then Pakistan is not where, say, Israel is at when it comes to rapid exploitation of intel leads.
But Pakistan could be pursuing a different strategy. Instead of trying to take down the TTP as a whole or change its political direction by mounting pressure, Pakistan may be trying to influence the Taliban regime’s support for anti-Pakistan militant groups. There, the legibility-and-speed framework has less validity. The kinds of military and intelligence options Pakistan has are sufficient for the application of that kind of pressure, at least in theory. This suggests the challenge is about the resilience of Afghanistan’s Taliban regime – not the level of military or other coercive pressure Pakistan can bring to bear. Whether Pakistan can figure out the coercive pressure points necessary to induce the Taliban into reconsidering their approach is the big question.
After the Oct. 9 air strikes, there were subsequent serious military clashes at several points along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. What are you watching out for in the days and weeks ahead?
In the coming weeks and months, I will be watching the trajectory of violence by the TTP and other anti-Pakistan militants operating from Afghanistan. I will also be watching how the Taliban position themselves toward these groups. The Taliban retain some controls over them but could loosen those controls and grant greater autonomy – or, under Pakistani pressure, tighten their controls to limit attacks. On the other side, Pakistan may continue striking TTP and allied targets inside Afghanistan, potentially even in politically sensitive areas such as Kabul.
A weekend statement from Pakistan’s Foreign Office pointedly expressed hope for the Afghan people’s “emancipation” – the first of its kind – which implicitly opens the door to more overt engagement with the Taliban’s opposition, offering that opposition its most significant international platform to date. Other countries may also play a critical role. Gulf powers such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar, along with China, have stakes in both Afghanistan and Pakistan and could seek to broker a broader de-escalation, though their efforts so far have struggled to alter the fundamentals.
Finally, the United States remains on the sidelines – contrary to conspiracy theories circulating in Afghanistan – though President Trump has indicated he might take a role if the conflict persists. Trump previously has voiced a desire to reclaim the Bagram airbase [a military base outside of Kabul] and has on one occasion hinted at possible military action against the Taliban if they don’t give up the base. If Trump’s involvement materializes, it could be very consequential.
