Islamabad has not yet commented on today’s air strikes, but spokesmen of the TTP and Afghan interim government said the attacks hit targets in camps occupied by hundreds of Pakistani insurgents and their families.
One of the Pakistani air strikes destroyed the home of a ranking TTP commander, Abdullah Shah, in Paktika’s Bermal district.
Seven members of his family were reportedly killed, but the TTP said Shah was in Pakistan’s South Waziristan tribal district at the time.
Another person was killed in Sepera district of Khost.
Zabihullah Mujahid, spokesman for the Afghan interim government, condemned the Pakistani attacks as a “reckless action and violation of Afghanistan’s territory”.
He warned that the air strikes could “lead to consequences which are beyond Pakistan’s control”.
Pakistan to ‘drain the swamp’ of militants in US-backed offensive
Pakistan to ‘drain the swamp’ of militants in US-backed offensive
Following the air strikes, Taliban forces opened fire on Pakistani soldiers manning border posts, leading to intermittent skirmishes.
Pakistan responded similarly to an unprecedented Iranian cross-border attack in January, when both countries conducted air strikes against ethnic Baloch rebels based in each other’s territory.
After Pakistan’s retaliatory strikes against Iran “to re-establish deterrence, responding to attacks emanating from Afghanistan was expected”, said Abdul Basit, a senior research associate of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.
Whether the air strikes would deter the TTP and change the Afghan Taliban regime’s “strategic calculus of hosting the group remains to be seen”, he said, but added that Pakistan “will increase the cost for the Taliban regime”.
Despite being an ally of the United States in the so-called war on terror launched after al-Qaeda’s September 11 attacks, Pakistan provided a safe haven to the Taliban during the US-led Nato occupation of Afghanistan between 2002 and 2021.
The US-installed government was made up mostly of Afghan politicians with a history of antagonism towards Pakistan.
Since the Taliban seized power in Kabul in August 2021, however, it has repeatedly rebuffed Pakistan’s demands for it to disarm the more than 5,000 TTP militants that the United Nations has said have taken refuge in Afghanistan.
Instead, the TTP took advantage of a Taliban-mediated ceasefire between June and November 2022 to infiltrate hundreds of fighters into northwest Pakistan, under the guise of a deal with Pakistan’s military to peaceably resettle them in their home districts.
Since then, the TTP has conducted a sustained campaign of attacks against the Pakistani security forces.
Some 693 people, including 330 security personnel, were killed in 306 terrorist attacks in Pakistan in 2023, a 17 per cent increase year on year, according to a report issued in January by the Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies, an Islamabad think tank.
About 82 per cent were carried out by the TTP, the Islam State-Khorasan, and separatists in western Balochistan province, whose activities sparked the exchange of air strikes between Iran and Pakistan in January.
In February, a UN Security Council monitoring committee reported that TTP militants based in Afghanistan were receiving “significant backing” from the Taliban regime and al-Qaeda terrorists that it hosts.
Besides supplying weapons and equipment, Taliban rank and file and al-Qaeda fighters assisted TTP forces in cross-border attacks, it said.
Al-Qaeda also provided suicide bomber training to the TTP at a camp in eastern Kunar province of Afghanistan, the UN Security Council committee reported.
Pakistan last conducted air strikes against the TTP in Afghanistan in April 2022, following an attack on a military convoy in which seven soldiers were killed.