The most worrisome flash point in South Asia today lies not between the nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan but to the west, along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. A simmering conflict between these two neighbors now threatens to explode—with damaging consequences for the wider region.

For nearly 20 years, Pakistan has suffered numerous attacks from terrorists belonging to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, a militant group that aims to overthrow Pakistan’s government and turn the country into an Islamist emirate. Islamabad blames the Taliban regime in Afghanistan for harboring TTP militants and allowing them to launch attacks on Pakistan from Afghan territory. Terrorist violence has spiked in Pakistan since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in 2021, with militants often targeting security forces near the border.

According to the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies, Pakistan experienced its deadliest year in a decade in 2025, with most of the violence caused by terrorist groups, including the TTP. Another Pakistani research organization, the Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies, tallied 699 terrorist attacks in 2025 (a 34 percent increase from 2024) that killed 1,034 people (a 21 percent increase from the previous year). Umar Media, the TTP’s official outlet, claims the group carried out 3,573 attacks and killed 3,481 people in 2025. Those figures are likely exaggerated. Still, the overall upward trend in attacks is deeply concerning. And it is made worse by the fact that the TTP can draw on increasingly sophisticated weaponry, including drones. Pakistan could very well face more devastating and deadly attacks in the near future.

In October, Pakistan carried out airstrikes on a terrorist convoy in Kabul and also hit TTP targets in Afghanistan’s Paktika Province. Those assaults precipitated retaliatory Taliban attacks on Pakistani border posts, which then led to another round of Pakistani strikes in Afghanistan. Subsequent talks mediated by Qatar and Turkey failed to secure a formal Taliban commitment to curb the TTP, although they did win a temporary cease-fire. The most recent round of talks, this time brokered by Saudi Arabia, took place at the end of November but made little progress. Several days later, Pakistani and Taliban forces exchanged fire, killing five Afghan civilians and wounding several more civilians on both sides of the border.

In recent weeks, both the Taliban and the Pakistani military have escalated a war of words. In early January, the chief Taliban spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid, accused Pakistan of working with outside powers, including the United States, to destabilize Afghanistan. “Pakistan should not harbor dreams of dominance over Afghanistan,” he warned. Several days later, Pakistan’s army spokesperson, Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, denounced the Taliban in a long press conference, declaring that terrorists across the board, including the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), al-Qaeda, and other regional militant groups, “all have one father—the Afghan Taliban.” (Ironically, Pakistan itself sponsored the Taliban from the group’s inception in the 1990s until the end of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan in 2021). In recent........

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