The Debate | Opinion | South Asia

Pakistan’s Attacks and the World’s Silence Over Afghanistan

The illegitimacy of the Taliban does not mean that the fundamental rights of the Afghan people have been suspended. 

In recent weeks, Pakistan has intensified its airstrikes on Afghanistan. Civilians, including children, are paying the highest price for the ongoing conflict between the neighboring countries. Among these attacks, the bombing of a drug rehabilitation center in Kabul was the most shocking. According to the United Nations, 143 people were killed in that strike and hundreds more were wounded; a figure that reflects nothing less than a human catastrophe. This came even as UNAMA, three weeks before the rehabilitation center attack, had reported that Pakistan’s strikes had killed at least 70 people, injured 478 others, and displaced around 115,000 people in Afghanistan.

The silence surrounding this escalating conflict is profound, and damning. Afghanistan today is suffocating under the harsh and repressive policies of the Taliban on the one hand, and facing cross-border attacks on the other. The people of Afghanistan are trapped in a multilayered siege: freedom and security have been taken from within, while from the outside their safety is being dangerously violated.

Yet, in the face of Afghanistan’s current reality, the silence of many states and institutions that usually speak in the name of protecting civilian life is louder than the explosions themselves. 

Sadly, after several years of professional work and engagement in these same spaces, I have gradually come to a bitter conclusion: the blood of Afghan children and Afghan civilians is often valued less than the blood of children and civilians elsewhere – blood that, when spilled, triggers one emergency meeting after another, brings swift condemnations, and fills the hallways of international institutions with statements of “deep concern.” 

But when it comes to Afghanistan, those same voices fall silent; or if something is said, it is so cautious and lifeless that it sounds more like an attempt to avoid responsibility than an expression of solidarity. It is a silence that sends one message clearly: The standards of empathy and outrage are not the same for everyone, and they are fixed based on where one lives.

More painful than the silence from outside, however, is part of the debate unfolding among Afghans themselves, particularly in the diaspora. Some say Pakistan has a right to defend itself, that Afghanistan has become a sanctuary for terrorist groups, and therefore Pakistan’s attacks were inevitable, justifiable. 

But before anything else, it must be said that a country that for decades has lived by the policy of “good terrorism” and “bad terrorism,” that created some groups, while sheltering , and making use of others in its regional rivalries, can hardly present itself today as a clean and credible actor in fighting terrorism. This duplicity is a political contradiction, and Pakistan knew that when it chose this path.

But even if the Pakistani state claims self-defense in its ongoing battle with Afghanistan, the issue still does not disappear. International law places strict conditions on the use of force, especially in the territory of another state. Necessity, proportionality, and the distinction between military and civilian targets are among the most basic of these conditions. There is no legal principle that says a state may, in the name of pursuing a security threat, attack another country’s territory, place civilian centers at risk of destruction, and then wrap everything up with a few security talking points. 

If that logic is accepted, the world enters a phase in which every state can simply say, “we have evidence,” and turn that into a license to bomb neighboring countries.

Since these attacks began, even a simple look through social media shows that some of those welcoming them are the very people who describe themselves as anti-Taliban. Of course, it must be said clearly that these voices do not represent the majority of people who genuinely oppose the Taliban. But this small group forgets one fundamental point: sovereignty and territorial integrity are not prizes reserved only for governments approved by the West. These are pillars of the international order, and every country has a right to them.

The Taliban regime is illegitimate and repressive, and many people in Afghanistan despise it. But hatred for the Taliban is not a license to bomb the homes of Afghan civilians. Welcoming external attacks in practice not only adds to people’s suffering, but also gives the Taliban an opportunity to cast itself as the defender of the country and to silence every internal critical voice by  labelling them as siding with a foreign enemy. 

At the same time, when an illegitimate regime is collapsed into an entire nation, millions of ordinary people are effectively placed in the same category; as if Afghanistan is the Taliban, and as if any harm inflicted on this land can be justified because the Taliban happen to rule it. That is precisely the dangerous moral and political mistake that feeds Taliban propaganda and sends the world the message that Afghanistan can, and ought to be, reduced to the Taliban.

This is not about defending the Taliban. The Taliban regime itself is one of the main causes of this very situation. The issue here is the defense of a principle: the illegitimacy of the Taliban does not mean the fundamental rights of the Afghan people have been suspended. If the world today accepts the logic that because Taliban rule is illegitimate, Afghanistan may be attacked, its civilians killed, and everything justified through security arguments, tomorrow that logic will become a dangerous habit at a broader international level. At that point, any country will be able to say, “my neighbor is bad, therefore its border is open to violation,” and by the end of the day escape accountability, expand the scale of violence step by step, and reach a point where even rehabilitation centers are no longer safe from the fire of war. Once a state becomes convinced that it will pay no serious political, legal, or diplomatic cost, escalation becomes almost inevitable.

What we are seeing today in Pakistan’s conduct is not accidental; it is the product of years of silence and selective accountability on the part of the international community. At the same time, from February 28 until now, the world has been consumed by the war involving the United States, Israel, and Iran; a war that has now entered its fourth week, and in which Iran, in response to Israeli and American strikes, has targeted countries hosting U.S. bases as well as Gulf energy infrastructure. In such an atmosphere, Afghanistan has once again been pushed to the margins.

If the international community continues this silence, it is not merely failing Afghanistan. It is normalizing a dangerous standard: that the bombing of medical centers and civilian areas can take place, but because the victims live in an isolated and abandoned country, no serious accountability for those responsible for the attack and killing will follow. That is not only a threat to Afghanistan, it is a threat to the international order itself. Once punishment is removed from the scene, the law begins to lose its meaning.

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In recent weeks, Pakistan has intensified its airstrikes on Afghanistan. Civilians, including children, are paying the highest price for the ongoing conflict between the neighboring countries. Among these attacks, the bombing of a drug rehabilitation center in Kabul was the most shocking. According to the United Nations, 143 people were killed in that strike and hundreds more were wounded; a figure that reflects nothing less than a human catastrophe. This came even as UNAMA, three weeks before the rehabilitation center attack, had reported that Pakistan’s strikes had killed at least 70 people, injured 478 others, and displaced around 115,000 people in Afghanistan.

The silence surrounding this escalating conflict is profound, and damning. Afghanistan today is suffocating under the harsh and repressive policies of the Taliban on the one hand, and facing cross-border attacks on the other. The people of Afghanistan are trapped in a multilayered siege: freedom and security have been taken from within, while from the outside their safety is being dangerously violated.

Yet, in the face of Afghanistan’s current reality, the silence of many states and institutions that usually speak in the name of protecting civilian life is louder than the explosions themselves. 

Sadly, after several years of professional work and engagement in these same spaces, I have gradually come to a bitter conclusion: the blood of Afghan children and Afghan civilians is often valued less than the blood of children and civilians elsewhere – blood that, when spilled, triggers one emergency meeting after another, brings swift condemnations, and fills the hallways of international institutions with statements of “deep concern.” 

But when it comes to Afghanistan, those same voices fall silent; or if something is said, it is so cautious and lifeless that it sounds more like an attempt to avoid responsibility than an expression of solidarity. It is a silence that sends one message clearly: The standards of empathy and outrage are not the same for everyone, and they are fixed based on where one lives.

More painful than the silence from outside, however, is part of the debate unfolding among Afghans themselves, particularly in the diaspora. Some say Pakistan has a right to defend itself, that Afghanistan has become a sanctuary for terrorist groups, and therefore Pakistan’s attacks were inevitable, justifiable. 

But before anything else, it must be said that a country that for decades has lived by the policy of “good terrorism” and “bad terrorism,” that created some groups, while sheltering , and making use of others in its regional rivalries, can hardly present itself today as a clean and credible actor in fighting terrorism. This duplicity is a political contradiction, and Pakistan knew that when it chose this path.

But even if the Pakistani state claims self-defense in its ongoing battle with Afghanistan, the issue still does not disappear. International law places strict conditions on the use of force, especially in the territory of another state. Necessity, proportionality, and the distinction between military and civilian targets are among the most basic of these conditions. There is no legal principle that says a state may, in the name of pursuing a security threat, attack another country’s territory, place civilian centers at risk of destruction, and then wrap everything up with a few security talking points. 

If that logic is accepted, the world enters a phase in which every state can simply say, “we have evidence,” and turn that into a license to bomb neighboring countries.

Since these attacks began, even a simple look through social media shows that some of those welcoming them are the very people who describe themselves as anti-Taliban. Of course, it must be said clearly that these voices do not represent the majority of people who genuinely oppose the Taliban. But this small group forgets one fundamental point: sovereignty and territorial integrity are not prizes reserved only for governments approved by the West. These are pillars of the international order, and every country has a right to them.

The Taliban regime is illegitimate and repressive, and many people in Afghanistan despise it. But hatred for the Taliban is not a license to bomb the homes of Afghan civilians. Welcoming external attacks in practice not only adds to people’s suffering, but also gives the Taliban an opportunity to cast itself as the defender of the country and to silence every internal critical voice by  labelling them as siding with a foreign enemy. 

At the same time, when an illegitimate regime is collapsed into an entire nation, millions of ordinary people are effectively placed in the same category; as if Afghanistan is the Taliban, and as if any harm inflicted on this land can be justified because the Taliban happen to rule it. That is precisely the dangerous moral and political mistake that feeds Taliban propaganda and sends the world the message that Afghanistan can, and ought to be, reduced to the Taliban.

This is not about defending the Taliban. The Taliban regime itself is one of the main causes of this very situation. The issue here is the defense of a principle: the illegitimacy of the Taliban does not mean the fundamental rights of the Afghan people have been suspended. If the world today accepts the logic that because Taliban rule is illegitimate, Afghanistan may be attacked, its civilians killed, and everything justified through security arguments, tomorrow that logic will become a dangerous habit at a broader international level. At that point, any country will be able to say, “my neighbor is bad, therefore its border is open to violation,” and by the end of the day escape accountability, expand the scale of violence step by step, and reach a point where even rehabilitation centers are no longer safe from the fire of war. Once a state becomes convinced that it will pay no serious political, legal, or diplomatic cost, escalation becomes almost inevitable.

What we are seeing today in Pakistan’s conduct is not accidental; it is the product of years of silence and selective accountability on the part of the international community. At the same time, from February 28 until now, the world has been consumed by the war involving the United States, Israel, and Iran; a war that has now entered its fourth week, and in which Iran, in response to Israeli and American strikes, has targeted countries hosting U.S. bases as well as Gulf energy infrastructure. In such an atmosphere, Afghanistan has once again been pushed to the margins.

If the international community continues this silence, it is not merely failing Afghanistan. It is normalizing a dangerous standard: that the bombing of medical centers and civilian areas can take place, but because the victims live in an isolated and abandoned country, no serious accountability for those responsible for the attack and killing will follow. That is not only a threat to Afghanistan, it is a threat to the international order itself. Once punishment is removed from the scene, the law begins to lose its meaning.

Natiq Malikzada is a journalist and human rights advocate who holds an LLM in International Human Rights Law from the University of Essex.

Afghanistan-Pakistan clashes

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