Pakistan and Afghanistan have continued to conduct cross-border strikes in a conflict that began on February 26th, when Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif described the state of relations between the two countries as “open war.” The escalation has seen the most intense fighting between the two nations since the Taliban came to power in 2021.
The true casualty count remains contested. The Taliban’s Defense Ministry claimed that the March 6th attack had “destroyed numerous Pakistani military posts” and subsequently killed dozens of Pakistani soldiers, in addition to the 150 Pakistani troops Kabul claims to have killed overall. Also on March 6th, Islamabad announced that it had “inflicted heavy losses” on the Afghan military, which Pakistani state-run media described as the product of air and ground attacks against Afghan forces and the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), referred to as the Pakistani Taliban by some. Pakistan’s Information Minister claimed in a March 6th post on the social media platform X that Pakistani forces had killed 527 Afghan soldiers.
Relations between the two countries have deteriorated since the 2021 Taliban takeover. In late 2022, the TTP ended its ceasefire with Islamabad and resumed attacks along the Durand Line, the internationally recognized border that the Taliban has called “imaginary.” Periodic skirmishes followed, culminating in deadly clashes in October 2025 that ended only after a Qatari-brokered ceasefire. Amid a surge of militant violence, Asif has accused the Taliban of “exporting terrorism,” an allegation the Taliban has repeatedly denied. The souring of tensions has coincided with a reset in India-Taliban relations, and Asif has claimed that “the Taliban turned Afghanistan into a colony of India.”
The fighting has not been limited to the two countries’ forces. The U.N. Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) reported 185 civilian casualties from indirect fire and airstrikes, including 56 deaths. As of March 6th, the conflict has displaced an estimated 115,000 people in Afghanistan and an additional 3,000 in Pakistan, according to the UN Refugee Agency.
The conflict’s trajectory remains uncertain. The Atlantic Council’s Michael Kugelman has noted that another internationally mediated ceasefire is unlikely, given that Saudi Arabia and Qatar, both previous brokers, are currently constrained by the fallout from the Iran war. Hostilities are therefore likely to continue even if fighting diminishes, given the Taliban’s international isolation and Pakistan’s uncompromising rejection of the TTP’s presence.
The factors consequential to both the conflict’s trajectory and the fates of Afghan and Pakistani civilians are structural and self-reinforcing. The Durand Line, drawn by British colonial authorities, arbitrarily divided Pashtun communities, who have faced increasing crossing restrictions since 2023. Pakistan’s response to the crisis has been largely coercive: facing Indian pressure to the east and mounting militant violence to the west, Islamabad has increasingly opted for force over accommodation. Western restrictions on Afghan refugees abroad and economic turmoil at home hardened Pakistan’s stance toward Afghans within its own borders as TTP pressure rose. The resulting deportation campaign, alongside Iran’s parallel expulsions, has collapsed remittance flows that served as a critical buffer against Afghanistan’s economic isolation. That pressure has both limited the Taliban’s domestic flexibility and strengthened TTP recruitment conditions, simultaneously reducing Kabul’s incentive and capacity to suppress the group. For Pakistan, TTP activity validates continued military operations that produce further displacement and deepen Afghan economic distress, perpetuating the cycle.
In the near term, protecting civilians through humanitarian access, pressure against strikes on civilian infrastructure, and opposition to further mass deportations are both the most achievable and most urgent goals available to outside actors. Still, civilian protection alone cannot substitute for the political work that durable resolution requires: engaging the Durand Line dispute, reversing the marginalization that sustains militant recruitment, and resolving the links between the Taliban’s governance and the country’s political, economic, and security instability. That work requires a long-term commitment that no government or institution currently appears willing to make, and the conflict is likely to persist as a result.
