Why Pakistan’s Afghan air strikes aren’t stopping armed attacks 

Islamabad, Pakistan – Pakistan struck targets of what it claimed were hideouts of an armed group in three Afghan provinces overnight and summoned Kabul’s envoy on Monday morning, after an assault on a Sindh Rangers base in Karachi over the weekend killed three paramilitary personnel and wounded four others.

Information Minister Attaullah Tarar announced on X that security forces had conducted strikes in Paktia, Paktika and Kunar provinces, claiming 25 fighters were killed. A separate ground operation in Bajaur in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Sunday night killed several members of Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA), including a senior commander, Tarar said, adding that large quantities of weapons and ammunition were also destroyed.

The JuA, which claimed responsibility for the Karachi attack, is a faction of the Tehreek-e-Taliban (Pakistan Taliban, or TTP), a group behind many of the deadliest bombings and killings that Pakistan has suffered in recent years.

On Monday, Pakistan’s Foreign Office spokesman Tahir Andrabi confirmed that Afghanistan’s charge d’affaires — the country’s top diplomat in Pakistan — issued a demarche, a formal diplomatic protest. Pakistan’s ambassador in Kabul delivered a separate demarche to the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs the same day.

“Afghan soil and Afghan nationals continue to be used to orchestrate terrorist attacks inside Pakistan,” Andrabi said.

The Afghan Taliban — which is distinct from the TTP and which rules in Kabul — has, however, insisted that the Pakistani strikes led to civilian casualties. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid posted images of wounded children and accused Pakistan of striking residential areas, claiming dozens of civilians had been killed.

Neither side’s claims could be independently verified, yet the Karachi attack, the Pakistani strikes on Afghan soil, and the war of narratives fit a pattern that has now increasingly become a routine descriptor of the Islamabad-Kabul relationship.

Pakistan has repeatedly used a combination of military strikes, deportation and diplomacy to try to crush the armed groups it accuses of attacking its territory. But the bombings and killings inside Pakistan continue — prompting a sharpening chorus from sections of analysts that it is time for Islamabad to reevaluate its strategy.

The Karachi assault

Pakistan’s strikes and diplomatic protest came in response to the June 27 assault on a Sindh Rangers compound in Karachi’s Gulistan-i-Jauhar neighbourhood. The JuA claimed responsibility.

Three Rangers personnel were killed in the attack, while three attackers died in return fire. One attacker was captured alive.

Pakistani security sources identified the arrested man as Usman Ali, an Afghan national from Jalalabad in Nangarhar province. According to investigators, he told authorities the team of attackers had entered Pakistan seven days before the assault.

Karachi had not witnessed an attack of this scale since February 2023, when TTP fighters stormed the Karachi Police Office on Shahrah-e-Faisal, killing four people.

According to the United Nations Security Council, the JuA is based in Nangarhar, the Afghan province whose capital is Jalalabad, the same city Pakistani authorities say the arrested attacker came from.

A faction seeking relevance

The JuA’s relationship with TTP has long been turbulent.

The TTP, formed in 2007, has waged a sustained armed campaign against the Pakistani state and remains the dominant militant umbrella network, which Islamabad says largely operates from Afghan territory. The JuA split from the group in 2014, rejoined in 2020 and, by early 2025, had drifted into semi-independence again.

When TTP announced new leadership appointments in February 2025, JuA received no significant positions, although no formal split was declared.

Ihsanullah Tipu Maseed, an expert on non-state armed groups in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, said the Karachi attack reflected JuA’s need to demonstrate continued relevance.

“Jamaat-ul-Ahrar has used this attack to send a message that they still possess the capability to carry out large-scale attacks inside Pakistan,” he told Al Jazeera. “There is always an internal competition among militant organisations to prove their capability to supporters and potential recruits. They want to demonstrate they can deploy multiple attackers to target key strategic security installations, independently of the TTP.”

Historically, JuA has been among the most hardline factions within the TTP network.

The group claimed responsibility for the 2016 Easter bombing at Lahore’s Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park, which killed more than 70 people. The November 2025 suicide bombing at Islamabad’s district court complex, which killed 12 people, was also attributed to the group.

“This is not limited to Karachi,” Maseed said. “It can happen in Punjab. It can happen in any major urban centre.”

Pressure without resolution

Pakistan’s response followed a now familiar pattern. A major attack takes place. Air strikes across the Afghan border follow within hours. Islamabad issues warnings. Kabul condemns civilian casualties. The cycle repeats.

The scale of the security challenge itself is not disputed.

According to the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, an Islamabad-based think tank, attacks in Pakistan rose 34 percent in 2025, with 699 incidents recorded nationwide. At least 1,034 people were killed and another 1,366 wounded.

More than 95 percent of the attacks were concentrated in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces.

Since February this year, Pakistan has carried out Operation Ghazab Lil Haq, a sustained military campaign involving air strikes, artillery exchanges and ground operations across eastern Afghanistan.

At the same time, Islamabad has deported close to one million Afghan nationals since September 2023 and pursued several rounds of ceasefire talks with the Taliban government in Kabul, including negotiations held in Urumqi in early April.

While some of those talks produced temporary pauses in violence, none resulted in a lasting settlement.

Maseed said the repeated cycle reflected deeper flaws in Pakistan’s broader counterterrorism approach.

“The fundamental flaw I see in Pakistan’s counterterrorism strategy is the lack of a consistent approach and an overreliance on the use of force, while governance flaws are left unaddressed,” he said.

According to the Islamabad-based analyst, Pakistan’s cross-border strikes are “largely reactive”.

“I see no holistic strategy underpinning them. After every attack, social media accounts push for strikes on Afghanistan. It appears that instead of developing a coherent counterterrorism strategy, decision-makers succumb to that pressure, and conduct strikes simply to be seen doing something,” he added.

Winning battles, losing narratives

Pakistan has pursued military pressure and diplomatic engagement simultaneously. But analysts question whether either approach rests on sound assumptions.

Ibraheem Bahiss, an Afghanistan analyst at the International Crisis Group, described Pakistan’s posture as maximum pressure built on an unproven premise.

“The underlying assumption is that a Taliban crackdown will produce a reduction in violence inside Pakistan,” he told Al Jazeera. “Whether that premise is correct, valid, and sound is genuinely up for debate.”

Bahiss drew a distinction between the Afghan Taliban refusing to act against the TTP and directly supporting attacks inside Pakistan.

“While there is evidence of Afghans operating within TTP ranks, that does not in itself constitute conclusive proof that the Afghan authorities are directing or supporting those operations,” he said.

He added that Pakistan’s tendency to link every major attack to Afghanistan “strikes me as more politically driven than evidence-based”.

Independent accounts, including UN figures, have repeatedly documented Afghan civilian casualties from Pakistani air strikes. The UN recorded at least 372 Afghan civilian deaths and 397 injuries in the first three months of 2026 alone. This includes dozens killed in a missile strike by Pakistan that hit a drug rehabilitation facility in Kabul in March.

Sami Yousafzai, a journalist and expert on Afghan affairs, said the civilian toll was reshaping public opinion inside Afghanistan.

“Many Afghans now believe that Pakistan’s strikes are changing the conversation around the Taliban regime,” he told Al Jazeera. “Even Afghans who were critical of Taliban policies – on women’s education, for instance – are now saying: Set that aside, let us talk about Pakistani aggression. Pakistan is essentially handing the Taliban a narrative, and the Taliban are cashing in on it very effectively.”

Yousafzai said the strikes were also reinforcing a broader historical narrative.

“No Afghan government in the last 40 years has claimed to have bombed Pakistan or attacked Pakistani territory in response to cross-border incidents,” he said. “Pakistani air strikes are reinforcing the narrative that Pakistan is the aggressor, and that is a serious long-term problem for Islamabad.”

Bahiss warned that the current trajectory could not continue indefinitely.

“We cannot go another year or two like this. It is inflaming public sentiment on both sides, causing serious trade disruption. The two sides will have to negotiate. What is needed now are fresher minds and a genuine new approach, because what is being tried right now is clearly not working,” he said.