With the US-Iran war raging, attention has been diverted from an admittedly lesser ongoing clash between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Whether or not this escalates further remains to be seen. If so, it could well be that after the United States, it may be Pakistan’s turn to learn that Afghanistan is a graveyard of empires.Islamabad now says that it is in “Open War” with Afghanistan. Action has been low-key in the past two days, but last Thursday, Pakistan conducted air strikes on a number of Afghan targets allegedly to target militants involved in cross-border attacks on Pakistan. In response, the Afghan Taliban targeted Pakistani positions along the border. Pakistan escalated this to a new operation, Ghazb lil Haq, and struck Taliban targets across the country.Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.On Saturday, Pakistan continued its ground and air operations against the Afghan Taliban striking an air base in Nangarhar and Kandahar. Reportedly, a Pakistan Air Force fighter was shot down and its pilot captured.In military terms, Pakistan is much more powerful than Afghanistan. While it has a half-a-million strong army and a strong Air Force, the Taliban forces are equipped with a few helicopters, armoured vehicles and hand-held weapons. The Pakistanis claim that they have killed over 300 Afghan Taliban and injured 500. They say they have destroyed over a hundred posts and captured 22 others. In addition they have destroyed scores of tanks and other vehicles.For their part, the Taliban have attacked Pakistani posts along the Durand Line that marks the border and also launched a number of attacks using modified civilian drones and some loitering munitions, likely fabricated locally. Attacks were carried out on the artillery school in Nowshera, as well as near the military academy in Abbottabad. The Taliban claimed that they had killed 55 Pakistan soldiers and taken 23 bodies back to Afghanistan, and had also captured some of the soldiers.The Pakistan-Afghanistan relationship has been a major element in the recent history of the region. To launch a jihad against the Soviet Union, the United States organised all the reactionary forces of Islamism in West and South Asia. The key role was played by Pakistan which received and stored the weapons organised by the US and its allies, trained the largely Pakhtun tribesmen and sent them to fight the Afghan government forces being backed by Moscow.Following the Soviet withdrawal, as the war wound down, tensions mounted among the various groups that had been created to conduct the jihad. In a move to bypass them, in 1994, Pakistan and the US helped create the Taliban who were, in the main, students of Islamist theology in the various madarsas of Pakistan and Afghanistan.But their leader, the one-eyed Mullah Omar, turned out to be a messianic figure who rallied the largely Pakhtun warlords of eastern Afghanistan and had his own ideas about what their goal was—to create an Islamic Emirate. After emerging victorious in the civil war, the Taliban established such an emirate, headquartered in Kandahar.In their rule between 1996-2001, they established a state with a strict interpretation of the Sharia that visited harsh discrimination against minorities, banning women from schools, and destroying cultural artefacts. They also permitted Osama bin Laden to establish himself in the country along with Al Qaeda. It was this that led to their ouster by the US which launched a war in a bid to eliminate bin Laden following 9/11 .They then undertook a long guerrilla war against the United States and eventually forced them to leave in August 2021, re-establishing the Emirate, this time under Mullah Omar’s successor Hibatullah Akhundzada.Also read: After Backing UAE, Modi Calls Netanyahu, Urges Early End to HostilitiesThe Taliban’s success in resisting and eventually defeating the US had a lot to do with Pakistan. The de facto Taliban government-in-exile functioned from Quetta between 2002-2021. Pakistan undertook a complex policy of backing the US in its global war on terror, providing the US and NATO forces logistical support and intelligence, and earning the designation of a “Major Non-NATO Ally.” Covertly, Pakistan supported the Quetta Shura and the Haqqani network. Pakistan believed that it was operating within its doctrine of establishing “strategic depth” against their principal adversary, India and ensuring that there is always a pro-Pakistan government in Kabul.As it became clear by 2018 that the US was looking for an exit strategy, Pakistan shifted its role from a covert supporter to a diplomatic facilitator. It played a critical role in bringing the Taliban to the negotiating table in Qatar and facilitating the talks with the US that led to the US-Taliban Doha Agreement.The Pakistanis believed that by incorporating the Taliban into a power-sharing agreement in Kabul, they would enhance their influence in Afghanistan and ease tensions with Washington. But the collapse of the Ghani government led to an outright victory for the Taliban.There is little doubt that Pakistan’s long term support for the Taliban doomed the government of Ashraf Ghani. This was not just in terms of sanctuary. Pakistani military officers participated in the planning, training and logistics of the Taliban offensives. Ghani had reached out to Pakistan and even suspended Indian-funded projects, but Islamabad doubled down in its support for the Taliban.When the Taliban captured Kabul, the response from Islamabad was largely celebratory. Prime Minister Imran Khan famously remarked that the Afghans has “broken the shackles of slavery.”Pakistan undertook a worldwide diplomatic offensive to prevent the isolation of the Taliban regime, urging the west to release frozen Afghan assets and humanitarian aid to prevent the economic collapse of the country. Pakistan moved its focus from a geostrategic to a “geoeconomic” paradigm, hoping a stable Taliban-led Afghanistan would facilitate trade with Central Asia.Most important, it sought the good offices of the Taliban to work out a deal with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, a Pakhtun insurgent group in Pakistan. The Taliban started out as mediators between Pakistan and the TTP and this led to a temporary one-month ceasefire in November 2021 and another in May 2022. But over time they became reluctant to pressure the TTP because of their ideological and ethnic alignment, and Pakistan began to accuse the Taliban of giving preferential treatment to the TTP and even providing them a “permissive environment” in Afghan territory.In November 2025, peace talks held in Istanbul and mediated by Qatar and Turkey stalled. Pakistan blamed the Taliban for their irresponsible behaviour. Tensions began to rise with clashes in the border leading to what Pakistan now terms “Open war” . The Taliban deny sheltering the TTP, insisting that the group’s insurgency is a domestic Pakistani issue. But Pakistan is demanding they do more to act against TTP hideouts.The US has come out in support of Pakistan in the recent clashes. It says that Pakistan has a right to defend itself against the Afghan Taliban. What the US goals are in Afghanistan is not clear. Recall Trump’s demand that the Taliban hand over the erstwhile American base of Bagram to the US twice last year.Also read: ‘Grave Violation of Protection Afforded to Schools’: UNESCO Decries US-Israel’s School AttackUN officials have called for immediate de-escalation. Before it got embroiled in a war itself, Iran had offered to mediate between the two countries. China called for restraint between the two sides and the Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said that the Taliban, too wanted to settle things through dialogue.In military terms, the Taliban is outgunned by Pakistan, though in a longer term fight, the Taliban experience in guerrilla warfare would be its trump card, especially if Pakistan blunders into a land campaign against Afghanistan. As of now, the fighting is limited, but if it is not checked it could spiral into all out war.Despite efforts by countries like Qatar, mediation between the two parties is difficult. The big issue is the Durand Line that marks the border, but which is not acceptable to Afghanistan. In the past, too, there have been periodic clashes as Pakistan has sought to fence the border. The presence of Pakhtun tribes on both sides of the border also makes it difficult to demarcate an effective political and social boundary.As it is, this is complicated by recent history in which Pakistan backed the Afghan Taliban, while its Pakistani counterpart the TTP launched thousands of attacks on the Pakistani state from sanctuaries in Afghanistan. In this sense this is a blowback for Pakistan’s policy of playing both sides in the wake of 9/11. Instead of strategic depth, what they have on their hands is a strategic nightmare.Manoj Joshi is a distinguished fellow with the Observer Research Foundation in Delhi.This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.