Increased hostilities on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border
The Taliban recently carried out a series of attacks on Pakistani positions in response to Pakistani shelling in Afghan territory. This is a decades-long territorial dispute.
Taliban fighters in Afghanistan
The escalation of cross-border violence between Pakistan and Afghanistan is not stopping. Clashes have recently erupted between Pakistani forces and those of the Taliban, the radical Afghan Islamists who took power in 2021 after the chaotic US withdrawal, Reuters and France 24 reported.
Last Saturday, Taliban jihadists carried out several offensives against Pakistani positions along the border. An estimated 19 Pakistani soldiers and three Afghan civilians were killed as a result of the attacks, pro-Taliban media outlet Hurriyet Daily News reported.
The attacks came after Pakistan carried out a series of bombings against a Taliban training center, killing 46 people, mostly women and children.
Enayatullah Khowarazmi, spokesman for the Taliban Defense Ministry, said that his government does not consider the areas attacked to be Pakistani territory, but confirmed that it was on the other side of the "hypothetical line," a concept used by the Taliban to refer to the disputed border area, which the international community recognizes as the boundary between the two countries.
Since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan during the US withdrawal, Pakistan and the jihadist group have had several clashes, but the situation has recently escalated.
The root of the conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan
The conflict between the Taliban and the Pakistanis is linked to Afghanistan's decades-long refusal to accept the Durand Line, the border drawn by British colonial authorities in the late 19th century.
The Durand Line was established between then British India, controlled by Britain, and the Emirate of Afghanistan.
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