He promises to retaliate for what he describes as “clear aggression”. The Taliban government denounced on Wednesday December 25 “barbaric” strikes by Pakistan which left 46 dead in eastern Afghanistan. A Pakistani security official said the raids, carried out by “planes and drones”, targeted “terrorist hideouts”, rejecting Taliban claims that civilians had died.
“Last night (Tuesday), Pakistani strikes were carried out in four areas of Barmal district, Paktika province,” Taliban government spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP. “The total number of martyrs is 46, most of whom are children and women,” he said, adding that there were also “six injured”. “The Islamic Emirate will not let this cowardly attack go unanswered but will instead consider the defense of its territory and its sovereignty as an inalienable right,” the ministry said in a statement Tuesday evening.
Since the return to power of the Taliban in Kabul in 2021, border tensions between the two countries have escalated. Pakistan claims that armed groups, such as the Pakistani Taliban Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which claim the same ideology as those on the other side of the border, carry out planned attacks from Afghan soil, across a very porous border. The Taliban government has always denied harboring foreign armed groups using Afghan soil to launch attacks against its neighbors.
According to a July UN Security Council report, approximately 6,500 TTP fighters are based in Afghanistan and “are not considered by Taliban authorities to be a terrorist group.” The Afghan Taliban supports and tolerates them, “providing weapons and allowing them to train,” the report said.
In March, eight civilians were killed in Pakistani air force strikes in eastern Afghanistan, leading to clashes between the two countries. And in April 2022, shots by the Pakistani army against eastern Afghanistan caused around fifty deaths, Islamabad having demanded “severe measures” from Kabul against the militants who attack its territory.
In a statement, the TTP accused Islamabad of “deliberately targeting refugee residences”. Waziristan is one of the former semi-autonomous tribal areas of northwest Pakistan, where the Pakistani army carried out numerous operations against insurgents linked to the Al-Qaeda network and the Taliban after the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan by the United States and its NATO allies. Many people from tribal areas took refuge in Afghanistan after the launch in 2014 of a military operation which made it possible to drive out the TTP.