Pakistan’s Aggression Against Afghanistan and India’s Options
24/03/2026
By Fatima Baloch
The USSR militarily intervened in Afghanistan in 1979, toppling President Mohammad Daoud Khan and installing a communist government under Babrak Karmal. In response, the United States and Saudi Arabia, under Pakistan’s supervision, brought together various Afghan factions, mostly tribal warlords, and labelled them the so-called Afghan mujahideen. They waged a decade-long proxy war in the interests of the U.S. and Pakistan that ultimately led to the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. Following the USSR’s retreat, the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan-backed mujahideen failed to form a unified government and instead began fighting among themselves out of greed for power. Pakistan backed warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in an attempt to conquer Kabul and install a pro-Pakistan government in Afghanistan. His rivalry with other mujahideen commanders sparked the devastating Afghan Civil War of 1992, in which millions were killed or displaced and Afghanistan’s well-developed cities were reduced to ruins, plunging the country into chaos. In effect, the sacrifices of thousands of fighters and nearly two million Afghans who died in the proxy war against the USSR and its backed communist government were rendered meaningless, betrayed by immature leaders and foreign puppets. Later, the Taliban—largely composed of madrassa students backed by the Pakistan military—emerged in 1994 as a new force opposing the warlords. They eventually seized control, defeating Hekmatyar, once considered Pakistan’s proxy. Pakistan sought strategic depth against India by installing a highly pro-Pakistan regime on its western border. In the context of the Durand Line and the Greater Afghanistan issue, Pakistan, for the first time since 1947, enjoyed a pro-Pakistan government in Afghanistan.
Buoyed by what it perceived as success in Afghanistan, Pakistan’s military establishment adopted similar proxy tactics in Kashmir. Islamabad supported, trained, and funded militant groups—most notably Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), led by Masood Azhar, and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), led by Hafiz Saeed—which fueled an insurgency in Indian-administered Kashmir. Prior to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Kashmir had been widely regarded as a peaceful region known for its natural beauty and international tourism. For decades, India responded to cross-border militancy with strategic restraint, focusing on counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism within its own borders while relying on diplomacy and international pressure to curb terrorism. However, major attacks—such as the Uri assault in 2016, the Pulwama bombing in 2019, and subsequent incidents in places such as Pahalgam—shifted India’s posture. India’s initial responses targeted terrorist infrastructure inside Pakistan. When Islamabad failed to remain restrained and instead continued supporting militants while engaging in hostilities, tensions escalated into a direct India-Pakistan confrontation in May 2025. India launched Operation Sindoor, a targeted military campaign aimed at dismantling terror networks responsible for mass civilian casualties. Although India briefly paused the operation, it warned that any future terrorist attack would trigger Operation Sindoor 2.0—an even more forceful military retaliation against the Pakistani Army, which had become an active participant in India’s war on terror.
Since then, there have been no major attacks on the Indian Army in Kashmir. India has relaunched large-scale operations to hunt down militants in the region, while Pakistan remains unable to openly support misguided Kashmiri and Punjabi extremist groups because of fears that Operation Sindoor may resume. As a result, parts of Kashmir have seen a return to relative normalcy. Meanwhile, karma appears to be hitting Pakistan hard, as the country is grappling with escalating internal security crises in provinces such as Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which have now contributed to the present Afghanistan-Pakistan war.
Despite possessing a large cache of nuclear weapons, Pakistan now faces a deepening security crisis and an existential threat. The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Baloch separatist groups such as the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) continue to wage high-intensity insurgencies. In the Global Terrorism Index 2026, Pakistan was ranked as the country most impacted by insurgency for the first time. The report, published by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), highlights a significant deterioration in Pakistan’s security landscape during 2025, with the country’s western and southern provinces descending into full-blown insurgency and near-civil-war conditions. Frustrated by its inability to suppress these religious and secular insurgencies, Pakistan launched fighter jet and drone strikes into Afghanistan on 14–15 October 2025 and again on 27 February 2026, violating Afghan sovereignty. It then opened a full-scale western front by bombing major Afghan cities, including Kabul, Kandahar, and Khost, destroying civilian infrastructure and killing innocent people during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. On 16 March, Pakistani fighter jets reportedly carried out an airstrike in Kabul targeting a drug rehabilitation hospital, in which more than 400 patients and medical staff were killed and 250 critically injured.
Pakistan’s key military objective is to pressure the Afghan Taliban-led government to fight Pakistan’s war against groups ideologically aligned with its adversaries, such as the TTP and BLA. If the Afghan Taliban were to take up arms against the TTP—whose members fought alongside them against the United States and NATO for two decades—it could trigger internal dissent and public anger within Afghanistan. Pakistan may seek to exploit such tensions to provoke instability, potentially leading to a civil war similar to that of 1992 and reshaping the current Taliban leadership.
Meanwhile, despite continued and unabated attacks by the TTP and the BLA, the insurgencies are expanding. The TTP is reportedly advancing toward Peshawar after launching its new operations, Khyber and Daf-e-Afghanistan, and it may eventually attempt to move toward Islamabad and expand its control across Pakistan, including Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). Such a scenario would pose serious security concerns for India. At the same time, the BLA and its associated groups continue to challenge Pakistan’s control in Balochistan. It is evident that Pakistan’s military, despite backing from China, Turkey, and several Arab countries, is embroiled in brutal insurgencies in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and is struggling to maintain control in a multi-front conflict, raising concerns about long-term stability.
These developments underscore Islamabad’s failure to manage asymmetric warfare. In desperation, Pakistan appears to be attempting to internationalise its internal conflicts by provoking Afghanistan in the hope that regional powers such as China, Qatar, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United States will pressure Kabul to act against groups sheltered across the Afghan border. It is worth noting that after the 9/11 attacks, Pakistan sided with the U.S.- and NATO-led war on terror in Afghanistan, serving as a key coalition ally for two decades. Pakistan received honorary non-NATO ally status and approximately $35 billion in military, economic, and financial assistance from the United States through the Coalition Support Fund (CSF). During this period, the TTP emerged and aligned ideologically with the Afghan Taliban in their insurgency against coalition forces. Pakistan’s repeated interference in Afghanistan’s internal affairs has brought destruction and misery, fueling nationalist and anti-Pakistan sentiments among Afghans and within Taliban 2.0 circles. Since Pakistan has a brutal legacy of interfering in Afghanistan’s internal matters, supporting anti-government factions, and fuelling civil wars and hostility toward Afghanistan, the current Afghan leadership now views a weakened or TTP-dominated Pakistan as a potential source of long-term peace and security. It envisions both countries as Sharia-based Islamic allies, alongside the disintegration of Pakistan and the independence of Balochistan, which could ultimately help Afghanistan regain Pakistan-occupied Pashtun areas. Consequently, Afghanistan is unlikely to abandon the TTP and the secular BLA in its war against Pakistan.
In the context of Pakistan’s military relationship with the United States, its interference in Afghanistan’s political affairs, the genocide in Bangladesh in 1971, and the ongoing brutality in Balochistan and Afghanistan, neither the Pakistani state nor its leadership strictly follows Islamic teachings. Based on this, on 18 March 2026, the Grand Mufti of the Afghanistan Supreme Court, Sheikh Mawlawi Abdul Rauf, reportedly issued a religious decree (fatwa) declaring jihad—a holy war—against Pakistan’s military authorities. The fatwa also frames the secular Baloch national struggle as a holy war. According to this decree from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s Supreme Court, anyone—whether Hindu, Muslim, or even Jewish—who fights against Pakistan will be granted paradise after death. Following this unusual fatwa, many Afghans and other Muslims in the region may be encouraged to join the ongoing TTP and BLA campaigns against Pakistan.
Strategic Options:
There is a possibility that Qatar, China, and Turkey could once again intervene to broker a ceasefire between Pakistan and Afghanistan, urging Pakistan to avoid further attacks on Afghanistan and instead address its internal conflicts with the TTP and BLA. However, attacks by both the TTP and the BLA are likely to continue with similar intensity, and Pakistan may continue to suffer significant losses. This could ultimately demonstrate the failure of Pakistan’s military objectives in Afghanistan and the potential collapse of the Pakistan Army, similar to the former Afghan National Army. Pakistan is built on an anti-India ideological framework, and as India’s immediate neighbour, its internal crises and external military misadventures will inevitably affect India as well. To divert public attention and once again seek international support from China, Turkey, and the Islamic world, Pakistan may attempt to provoke or wage a conflict against India following a major terrorist attack inside India. Former Pakistan High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit’s cowardly threat—“If the U.S. attacks Pakistan, we will bomb major Indian cities like Bombay and New Delhi”—is also an indication of Pakistan’s desperation.
In the context of the current Afghanistan-Pakistan conflict, where Pakistan is widely perceived as the aggressor, India may consider recognising the Afghan Taliban government—similar to Russia’s diplomatic engagement—and expanding its strategic engagement with Afghanistan. India may also need to prepare contingency plans regarding the future of PoK in the event of major destabilisation in Pakistan, particularly if the TTP were to advance into the region. Diplomatic engagement with China could emphasise that if the TTP were to gain control over PoK and parts of Pakistan, it would also pose a significant security risk to China because of geographical proximity. Therefore, the liberation of PoK and the protection of moderate Shia Muslim communities there could align with the strategic interests of both China and India. Additionally, engagement with secular Baloch nationalist groups, particularly the leadership of the BLA, could become an important component of India’s long-term regional strategy.
Encouraging regional cooperation with Afghanistan could also reshape the geopolitical balance. Such developments would weaken the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) passing through PoK, strengthen India’s sovereignty claims, and potentially provide India with greater strategic access to Central Asia.
Conclusion
In any war, military objectives are decisive. As in 1965, 1971, and Kargil, Pakistan’s current ongoing war against Afghanistan may also end in humiliation if it fails to achieve its objective of forcing the Afghan Taliban-led government to fight Pakistan’s war against the TTP and BLA. In the context of Pakistan’s aggression against Taliban-led Afghanistan, India should militarily and diplomatically support Afghanistan. India should provide financial and economic assistance to the Afghan government for the welfare of ordinary Afghans, engage in the construction of roads, industries, hospitals, and educational institutions, and thereby win the hearts of the Afghan people. In particular, India should urgently announce the reconstruction of the addiction treatment and rehabilitation hospital destroyed in the Pakistani fighter jet strike on 16 March, in which more than 400 patients and medical staff were reportedly killed and 250 critically injured. Such initiatives would make Afghanistan more pro-India and more firmly opposed to Pakistan. As part of this effort, to counter Pakistan’s use of religion against India and its repeated blaspheming of Islam, India should deploy well-educated Indian Muslim diplomats, alongside Hindu team members, across Arab and Muslim countries. These teams could expose Pakistan’s crimes against Muslims and humanity, particularly in Balochistan, Afghanistan, and Kashmir.
Indian strategists and policymakers must understand that the Pakistan Army could collapse under pressure from the TTP and BLA, just as the former Afghan National Army collapsed before the Taliban’s capture of Kabul on 15 August 2021. In such a scenario, PoK could also fall under TTP influence. Notably, the TTP already reportedly maintains a strong presence there and has declared Kashmir a new “Vilayat,” dividing Gilgit into two subdivisions: Vilayat Diamer and Vilayat Darel, where the Pakistan Army is already facing attacks and ambushes. The presence of such extremist groups in PoK—where the population largely consists of Shia communities and moderate Muslims, and which India regards as legally part of the Indian Union—poses a serious security threat to India, as the TTP adheres to an anti-India jihadist ideology. A destabilised Pakistan dominated by extremist forces would threaten South Asian stability and pose serious risks to both India’s and China’s security. Conversely, an independent and secular Balochistan could emerge as a stabilising regional partner. Additionally, the disintegration of Pakistan and the independence of a secular republic of Balochistan would neutralise CPEC passing through PoK, weaken the China-Turkey and other anti-India nexus in the region, and allow Afghanistan to regain its Pakistan-occupied territories across the Durand Line, potentially reshaping the Greater Afghanistan project.
It is deeply concerning that Pakistan is widely regarded as Islamic and democratic despite its historical and ongoing actions causing immense harm to Muslim populations. From the Bengali genocide to interventions in Afghanistan and the systematic repression of Pashtun and Baloch communities, Pakistan has undermined Islam’s moral standing.
In the name of humanity, justice, and the protection of the Arab-raced Muslim Baloch nation, the global community must take meaningful diplomatic, political, and humanitarian action. The establishment of an independent, democratic Baloch nation at the gateway of the Middle East would contribute to regional stability and serve the long-term interests of the Arab and wider Muslim world. The Baloch nation would remain deeply grateful for solidarity, support, and principled action.
Given Pakistan’s aggression against Afghanistan, its internal war with the TTP and BLA, Chinese expansionism, and anti-Baloch policies, India, being a responsible neighbour and taking Arab and Muslim countries into confidence, must act decisively. The disintegration of Pakistan and the independence of Balochistan would neutralise China’s regional influence. India should prepare contingency plans to reclaim PoK, engage secular Baloch nationalists, and coordinate with Afghanistan for long-term stability. As in 1971, India has both a moral and strategic obligation to support self-determination.
About the Author
Fatima Baloch is a senior geopolitical and regional affairs analyst who writes extensively on Afghanistan, Balochistan, and India, with a focus on regional security dynamics, insurgency movements, and South Asian strategic affairs.