ISLAMABAD — Pakistan's military carried out a new round of strikes along its border with Afghanistan before dawn on Sunday, targeting what the government described as seven militant camps belonging to the Pakistani Taliban and an affiliate of the Islamic State group, the latest in a succession of cross-border operations that has pushed relations between Islamabad and Kabul to their lowest point in years.

The government's information minister announced the operation in a post on social media in the early hours of Sunday morning, describing the strikes as "intelligence-based, selective operations" directed at camps belonging to the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, known as the TTP, and its affiliates. An affiliate of the Islamic State Khorasan Province was also among the targets, according to the minister's statement. The government did not specify the precise locations of the strikes, no initial casualty figures were released by Pakistani authorities, and there was no immediate response from Kabul as of the time of this report.

The Strikes and What Pakistan Has and Has Not Said

The deliberate brevity of the official announcement is itself significant. Islamabad has in previous operations provided detailed breakdowns of targeted locations, casualty claims, and named commanders killed. The more guarded characterisation of Sunday's strikes, identifying only the number of camps and the militant groups targeted without geographic specificity, suggests either operational security considerations or an attempt to manage diplomatic fallout at a particularly sensitive moment.

The distinction between strikes "along the border" and strikes "inside Afghanistan" is legally and diplomatically meaningful. Prior operations, particularly those conducted in October 2025 during what became a brief but serious military confrontation, involved strikes deep into Afghan provinces including Kabul, Kandahar, and Paktika, drawing international condemnation and prompting brief Taliban military retaliation. Sunday's announcement was phrased more ambiguously, and independent verification of strike locations was not possible because the Pakistani military restricts media access to operational areas along the Durand Line.

The Surge in Attacks That Preceded the Operation

The strikes follow a sharp intensification of militant violence inside Pakistan in recent weeks. A suicide bombing at a Shia mosque in Islamabad's Tarlai Kalan neighbourhood on February 6, 2026, killed more than 30 people and wounded 169 others, with a splinter faction of the Islamic State group claiming responsibility. The Islamabad attack followed coordinated suicide and gun assaults in Balochistan on February 1, 2026, in which 33 people were killed, predominantly civilians, including five women and three children. Provincial authorities attributed those attacks to the Baloch Liberation Army, a separatist organisation that both the United States and the United Nations have designated as a foreign terrorist organisation. Security forces subsequently reported killing 145 fighters in a 40-hour counterterrorism operation across Balochistan that followed the February 1 attacks.

The cumulative toll from 2025 provides the broader statistical frame for understanding the pressure driving Sunday's decision. Pakistan's South Asia Terrorism Portal recorded 1,709 terrorist incidents during 2025, resulting in approximately 3,967 deaths, a figure that represents a further deterioration from 2024, itself described by analysts as one of the most violent years in over a decade. The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project recorded more than 80 border clashes between Afghanistan and Pakistan during 2025, more than double the number recorded in 2024, and documented over 60 aerial strikes by Pakistani forces targeting claimed militant positions during the same period.

TTP, ISKP, and the Geometry of the Threat

The TTP and ISKP present Pakistan with distinct but overlapping security challenges, and the decision to target both in the same operation reflects the increasingly tangled nature of the militant landscape along the frontier. The TTP, formed in 2007, has waged a sustained campaign of violence against the Pakistani state for nearly two decades. It is designated as a terrorist organisation by both the United States and the United Nations. Its leadership and operational infrastructure are widely assessed by Pakistani and Western intelligence services as being based primarily in Afghan territory, a claim the Afghan Taliban government has consistently denied. Pakistan has long accused the Afghan Taliban of tolerating if not actively facilitating TTP operations, a charge Kabul rejects on the grounds that it does not permit its territory to be used against neighbouring states.

ISKP presents a different profile. It is ideologically hostile to both the Afghan Taliban and to the Pakistani state, and its inclusion as a target in Sunday's operation reflects a broadening of the militant threat that Pakistan faces in its border regions. The group suffered significant setbacks during 2025, including the arrest of its chief propagandist and the dismantling of external operations networks in Balochistan by Pakistani security services, but analysts tracking its activities noted signs of operational recovery toward the end of the year. The February 6 Islamabad mosque bombing, claimed by an ISKP splinter faction, appears to have been the proximate trigger for including ISKP-affiliated infrastructure among Sunday's targets. The convergence of TTP, ISKP, and Baloch Liberation Army activity, with each group operating from distinct ideological bases but occasionally overlapping in tactics and geography, has forced Pakistan's security establishment to manage simultaneous threats with both kinetic and political instruments.

The Diplomatic Calculus With Kabul

Every Pakistani cross-border operation arrives weighted with a diplomatic cost that Islamabad has increasingly decided it can absorb. The October 2025 confrontation, which escalated into the most serious military clashes between Pakistan and Afghanistan since the Taliban's return to power in August 2021, produced dozens of casualties on both sides, drew international calls for restraint from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, and temporarily closed both the Torkham and Chaman border crossings, the two principal land trade routes between the countries. A ceasefire mediated by Qatar was announced on October 19, 2025, but Pakistani officials reported repeated TTP attacks during and after the ceasefire period, contributing to the erosion of what was already a fragile diplomatic framework.

Pakistan's position has hardened across multiple indicators. Its defence minister has warned publicly of "open war" with Afghanistan if the two governments cannot reach an agreement on the TTP's cross-border operations. The country's intelligence agency has conducted outreach to Afghan Taliban counterparts at multiple levels without producing any verifiable commitment from Kabul to move against TTP infrastructure. India's deepening diplomatic engagement with the Taliban government in Kabul, including its announcement of an upgrade of its technical mission there to a full embassy, has added a further strategic dimension that Pakistani officials interpret as a deliberate effort to compound their security difficulties along the western frontier. Pakistan has accused India of backing the BLA, a charge New Delhi denies and for which Pakistani officials have not provided publicly verifiable evidence.

The October 2025 ceasefire produced a brief pause in the exchange of strikes and counter-strikes. Sunday's operation suggests Islamabad has concluded that the ceasefire framework, to the extent it ever held, no longer constrains its freedom of action in the border region. The Afghan Taliban government had not issued a public response as of the time of this report, but its prior statements following Pakistani operations have ranged from formal condemnation to declared retaliatory operations, and the absence of an immediate reaction should not be read as acquiescence. The pattern that analysts at ACLED and the Atlantic Council have documented throughout 2025, of Pakistani strikes drawing Taliban condemnation, TTP attacks continuing regardless, and diplomatic initiatives failing to produce durable arrangements, is likely to govern the near-term trajectory of this confrontation as well.

Written by Nick Ravenshade for NENC Media Group, original article and analysis.