As Pakistan’s air attacks against Afghanistan intensify, criticism is also rising. Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo recently pointed out that decades of support for the Taliban had finally come home to roost. Social media is awash with images of Kabul burning, and live fire across the border, even as the Afghans claimed their own air strikes. All this hardly comes out of the blue. The Pakistan defence minister Khwaja Asif had warned of air strikes against Afghanistan, as the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) waged a relentless war against Pakistani forces. What was worrying was the minister’s warning in the same breath of a “strong possibility” of an India-Pakistan war, apparently due to India’s support for the Taliban in a proxy war. The minister rambled on, and didn’t give a single fact to support his contention, but in the world of diplomacy, these are fighting words. It needs to be examined carefully.

First, the critical aspects of Operation Ghazab lil-Haq. It hit Kabul, Kandahar, and a row of targets next to the central section of the border from Angoor Adda to Bajaur. In other words, other than a “punishing” attack on the capital, the whole frenzy seems to have hit refugee camps along the border, which in all probability also houses “terrorists”. Rawalpindi should know. It created both. The first category was created in 1974, when Pakistan first started its proxy war against Afghanistan, long before the US........

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