Since October 2025, Pakistan has carried out multiple air strikes in Afghanistan, causing large-scale civilian casualties and destruction. The deadliest came on March 16, 2026, when a drug rehabilitation centre in Kabul was hit, killing 269 civilians and injuring 122, according to United Nations figures.

In a report released on July 21, Amnesty International called on Pakistani authorities to explain the strike and urged that it be investigated as a possible war crime.

Pakistan says its operations target the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (the Pakistan Taliban or TTP), which it accuses the Afghan Taliban of supporting. The Taliban authorities deny supporting the group and insist the insurgency is Pakistan’s internal problem. Yet the strikes have failed to eliminate any prominent TTP leader or commander. Is the TTP the true source of contention, or are there other dimensions to the conflict?

A crisis rooted in Pakistan

The roots of the TTP lie inside Pakistan. In November 1994, Sufi Mohammad led an armed uprising in Swat and Malakand to impose Sharia law, the first such campaign led by a cleric in the country. Thirteen years later, Baitullah Mehsud, from South Waziristan, united several militant factions under the TTP banner. Sufi Mohammad’s son-in-law, Mullah Fazlullah, led the group from 2013 until his death in a US drone strike in 2018. The movement from which the TTP emerged therefore predates the Afghan Taliban itself.

Over the past two decades, the Pakistani military has launched nearly a dozen major operations against the group. Yet the TTP survived not only because of its resilience or ideological appeal, but because of Pakistan’s distinction between “good” and “bad” militants. Islamabad’s covert support for the insurgency in Afghanistan, intended to weaken and ultimately bring down the former Afghan republic, sustained militant networks and infrastructure from which the TTP also benefitted.

Pakistan has long been accused of using militant groups to pursue geostrategic objectives in Afghanistan and against India. Following Afghanistan’s 1978 communist coup and the Soviet invasion the next year, it became a key Western ally, particularly for the United States, in containing Soviet influence. Pakistan was already hosting Afghan opposition figures,........

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