'Grave threat to security': Pakistan justifies air strikes on Taliban rebels in Afghanistan
Pakistan's ministry of foreign affairs described air strikes its military carried out on Monday as "intelligence-based anti-terrorist operations in the border regions inside Afghanistan", after seven Pakistani soldiers were killed in an attack by Taliban rebels based in the neighbouring country.
Monday's operation specifically targeted the Hafiz Gul Bahadur militant faction, a Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) affiliate which claimed responsibility for Saturday's lethal attack against a Pakistani military post.
Over the past two years, Pakistan "has repeatedly conveyed its serious concerns" to the Afghan interim government "over the presence of terror outfits including the TTP inside Afghanistan", the foreign ministry said.
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"These terrorists pose a grave threat to Pakistan's security and have consistently used Afghan territory to launch terror attacks inside Pakistani territory," it said.
Seven Pakistani soldiers, including a colonel and captain, were killed in the TTP attack in North Waziristan tribal district on Saturday, prompting President Asif Ali Zardari to warn that Pakistan would avenge their deaths.
Pakistan Air Force jets later conducted air strikes against TTP targets in the border Khost and Paktika provinces at around 3am local time on Monday, spokesmen for the TTP and Afghanistan's Taliban regime said.
The Pakistani military on Monday said the recent wave of terrorism in the country "has the full support and assistance of Afghanistan", adding that the TTP attack had been launched from across the border.
The Afghan interim government "is not only arming the terrorists but also providing a safe haven for other terrorist organisations as well as being involved in the incidents of terrorism in Pakistan", the military said.
Spokesmen for the TTP and Afghan interim government said the air strikes hit targets in camps occupied by hundreds of Pakistani insurgents and their families.
One of the Pakistani strikes destroyed the home of a ranking TTP commander, Abdullah Shah, in Paktika's Bermal district.
Seven members of his family were reportedly killed, but the TTP said Shah was in Pakistan's South Waziristan tribal district at the time.
Another person was killed in Sepera district of Khost.
Zabihullah Mujahid, spokesman for the Afghan interim government, condemned the Pakistani attacks as a "reckless action and violation of Afghanistan's territory".
He warned that the air strikes could "lead to consequences which are beyond Pakistan's control".
Following the air strikes, Taliban forces opened fire on Pakistani soldiers manning border posts, leading to intermittent skirmishes.
Three soldiers including a captain were killed in Pakistan's Kurram tribal district during the cross-border shooting, a local police officer told the dawn.com news site.
Pakistan responded similarly to an unprecedented Iranian cross-border attack in January, when both countries conducted air strikes against ethnic Baloch rebels based in each other's territory.
After Pakistan's retaliatory strikes against Iran "to re-establish deterrence, responding to attacks emanating from Afghanistan was expected", said Abdul Basit, a senior research associate of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University.
Whether the air strikes would deter the TTP and change the Afghan Taliban regime's "strategic calculus of hosting the group remains to be seen", he said, but added that Pakistan "will increase the cost for the Taliban regime".
Despite being an ally of the United States in the so-called war on terror launched after al-Qaeda's September 11 attacks, Pakistan provided a safe haven to the Taliban during the US-led Nato occupation of Afghanistan between 2002 and 2021.
The US-installed government was made up mostly of Afghan politicians with a history of antagonism towards Pakistan.
Since the Taliban seized power in Kabul in August 2021, however, it has repeatedly rebuffed Pakistan's demands for it to disarm the more than 5,000 TTP militants that the United Nations has said have taken refuge in Afghanistan.
Instead, the TTP took advantage of a Taliban-mediated ceasefire between June and November 2022 to infiltrate hundreds of fighters into northwest Pakistan, under the guise of a deal with Pakistan's military to peaceably resettle them in their home districts.
Since then, the TTP has conducted a sustained campaign of attacks against the Pakistani security forces.
Some 693 people, including 330 security personnel, were killed in 306 terrorist attacks in Pakistan in 2023, a 17 per cent increase year on year, according to a report issued in January by the Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies, an Islamabad think tank.
About 82 per cent were carried out by the TTP, the Islam State-Khorasan, and separatists in western Balochistan province, whose activities sparked the exchange of air strikes between Iran and Pakistan in January.
In February, a UN Security Council monitoring committee reported that TTP militants based in Afghanistan were receiving "significant backing" from the Taliban regime and al-Qaeda terrorists that it hosts.
Besides supplying weapons and equipment, Taliban rank and file and al-Qaeda fighters assisted TTP forces in cross-border attacks, it said.
Al-Qaeda also provided suicide bomber training to the TTP at a camp in eastern Kunar province of Afghanistan, the UN Security Council committee reported.
Pakistan last conducted air strikes against the TTP in Afghanistan in April 2022, following an attack on a military convoy in which seven soldiers were killed.
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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