Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Asif declared “open war” on Afghanistan on Thursday as Islamabad launched airstrikes on the Afghan capital in Kabul, claiming to have killed 274 Afghan Taliban fighters throughout various city-centres in the country.
Afghanistan’s Taliban-ruled government, however, refutes those figures, saying that only eight of its own fighters have died since fighting began, while noting that 55 Pakistani troops were killed by Afghan fighters.
Tensions between the two neighboring countries have remained a constant sticking point in Middle East peace efforts.
The two nations are divided by a 1,600-mile-long border frontier called the Durand Line, named after British diplomat Mortimer Durand, which was drawn up in 1893.
The border line cuts through traditional Afghan Pashtun territory, an ethnic tribe from which Afghanistan’s Taliban-ruled government derives.
The border has remained a point of conflict for decades, with skirmishes between the two armies constantly testing tensions.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban-led government of harboring Pakistani Taliban fighters from the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a jihadist-militant organization that operates along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, and has been waging an insurgency war against the ruling Pakistani government in Islamabad since 2007.
Pakistan began launching strikes on the Afghan capital after accusing Taliban fighters in Afghanistan of “unprovoked firing” from across the border.
The Taliban government spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid, issued a statement in response to the declaration of war by the Pakistani defense minister:
“Pakistan’s internal conflict is entirely a matter for that country and is not a new issue. A war has been ongoing for about twenty years between Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Pakistani army. In 2007, the TTP declared itself in Pakistan’s tribal areas, after which Pakistan conducted successive military operations there, the largest of which was “Operation Zarb-e-Azb”, which began in 2014.”
