On Thursday night, Pakistan attacked targets in Afghanistan. The results of that attack are disputed. The Taliban, the Islamic fundamentalist nationalist movement that controls Afghanistan, says that between nine and 10 civilians were killed, including women and children.
But Pakistan claims the strike killed 22 militants and destroyed weapons and ammunition depots. These early October attacks are just the latest escalation in a conflict between the two countries that reignited mid-September, after months of comparative calm. The conflict was sparked again after a series of attacks on Pakistani security forces.
On September 18, an attack on a police compound in the northwestern city of Kohat resulted in the deaths of 31 people and more than 100 injured. A splinter group belonging to the Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, claimed responsibility for the attack in Kohat, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, bordering Afghanistan. Pakistan accused Afghanistan of providing the TTP with a safe haven.
Afghanistan denies this but clashes at the border and then airstrikes by Pakistan followed. The TTP in Pakistan is not the same as Afghanistan's Taliban. Although it does have close ideological and personnel ties to the Afghan Taliban, it is an independent organization that fights the Pakistani state.
Many of its fighters sided with the Taliban during that country's long-running insurgency against international and US troops. This is why, after the Taliban returned to power in 2021, the TTP gained more room and more leverage. This has meant that Afghanistan — a former ally of Pakistan — has increasingly become a threat to its neighbor.
Pakistan has asked the Taliban to take action against the TTP, but the close connection between the two make this difficult. "Because of these personal connections and networks, it is extremely difficult for the Afghan Taliban to break away," says Conrad Schetter, director of the Bonn International Center for Conflict Studies, or BICC. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video The connections don't mean that the Taliban has any control over the TTP.
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