Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif declared “open war” on Afghanistan on Friday, promising “there will be chaos and a reckoning” after the Taliban junta launched drone strikes against targets in Pakistan.
“Our cup of patience has overflowed. Now it is open war between us and you,” Asif growled in a post on social media platform X.
Asif complained that the Taliban has “turned Afghanistan into a colony of India.”
“They gathered all the terrorists of the world in Afghanistan and began exporting terrorism. They deprived their own people of basic human rights. They snatched away the rights that Islam grants to women,” he said.
“Pakistan made every effort to keep the situation normal through direct means and through friendly countries. It engaged in full-fledged diplomacy. But the Taliban became a proxy for India,” he said.
Asif promised that the Taliban would fare more poorly against Pakistan’s military than they did against American and Western forces during the long U.S. occupation of Afghanistan.
“Pakistan’s army did not come from across the seas. We are your neighbors; we know your ins and outs. Allahu Akbar,” he concluded.
Pakistani and Taliban forces have been clashing along their border since shortly after the Taliban seized power in 2021, following former president Joe Biden’s botched withdrawal of American forces. Pakistan almost immediately complained that the Taliban was harboring militants who wanted to overthrow the Pakistani government, and they were now equipped with American military hardware carelessly left behind by Biden.
Pakistan was quite supportive of the Taliban when it was an insurgent force fighting America and its allies, but the relationship turned sour when the Taliban junta rejected demands from Islamabad to stop harboring and supporting militants.
As Asif’s comments indicated, Pakistan has also become very uncomfortable with diplomatic outreach to Kabul from its rival India, as part of a regional realignment that has also seen India’s traditional ally Bangladesh moving closer to Pakistan – the nation it violently broke away from in the 1970s.
The Taliban has more recently complained that Pakistani intelligence agencies are supporting anti-Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan. Taliban officials say thousands of foreign fighters, including from Pakistan, are inside Afghanistan and training as suicide bombers, and some foreign observers support their claims.
Pakistani and Taliban forces spent much of 2025 taking potshots at each other, backing down briefly after a ceasefire agreement in October brokered by Turkey and Qatar. The ceasefire collapsed within a month, and hostilities began steadily escalating again.
On Friday, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid announced Afghanistan was conducting “large-scale offensive operations” against the Pakistani military, “in response to repeated border violations and insurgency by Pakistani military circles.”
Pakistan quickly declared “counterstrikes” against Afghan cities, including the capital of Kabul, in response to the “unprovoked Afghan attacks.” Pakistani military communications referred to the strikes as “Operation Wrath for Truth’s Sake.”
Each side claimed to have inflicted significant damage on the other, and each denied the other’s claims of heavy casualties inflicted. Asif’s declaration of “open war” came on the heels of Pakistani airstrikes hitting Kabul. Foreign reporters said they heard loud explosions and ambulance sirens in the Afghan capital, along with columns of black smoke from detonations.
“The cowardly Pakistani military has carried out air strikes in certain areas of Kabul, Kandahar and Paktia. Fortunately, there have been no reported casualties,” Taliban spokesman Mujahid claimed.
Pakistan, in turn, denied Mujahid’s claims that Afghan forces killed dozens of Pakistani soldiers and seized control of 19 border outposts, plus two larger Pakistani military bases.
Pakistani state media claimed airstrikes “destroyed” a Taliban brigade headquarters and ammunition depot in Kandahar, plus several Taliban border outposts.
The Pakistani foreign ministry appeared to back down slightly from Asif’s declaration of open war later on Friday morning, warning that “any further provocations by the Taliban regime, or attempts by any terrorist group to undermine the security and welfare of the people of Pakistan, will be met with a measured, decisive and befitting response.”
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