Pakistan Strikes Kunar and Paktika, Ending Three Months of Relative Calm Along the Durand Line

The news

Kabul, Islamabad and New Delhi. Pakistan carried out fresh strikes inside Afghanistan early on Monday, September 21, across the Durand Line — the 1893 boundary between British India and Afghanistan that Afghanistan has never formally accepted. The Economic Times says at least three people were killed and six injured, that the strikes in Kunar province were Pakistan’s first known airstrikes inside Afghanistan since June 29, and that Pakistan claimed 28 militants were killed. The Indian Express, citing Reuters, reports that Pakistan’s Information Ministry gave the toll of 28 militants while its military did not comment, that a Pakistani security official named the provinces of Paktika and Kunar, and that the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) confirmed three civilian deaths — a man, a woman and a girl. The Hindu, citing AFP from Patan in Afghanistan, reports Islamabad’s claim that it targeted “terrorist hubs” in an “intelligence-driven ground operation”, so the papers describe the Pakistani action differently: airstrikes in ET and IE, a ground operation in Pakistan’s own statement as reported by The Hindu. The Taliban government rejected the claim, warned of an “appropriate response”, and its Foreign Ministry summoned Pakistan’s chargé d’affaires — the diplomat in charge of an embassy in the ambassador’s absence — and lodged a protest. The ET adds that UNAMA had documented 28 civilians killed and 49 injured in Pakistani strikes in June, and 399 civilian casualties — 57 killed and 342 injured — from Pakistani cross-border strikes between April 1 and June 30. The IE says the conflict escalated in February and hundreds died in the first half of the year. On Saturday, Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid told Al Arabiya English that Afghanistan would give a “crushing response”, adding: “If Pakistan invokes Article 51 to violate the sanctity of Afghan territory, Afghanistan has the right to defend its country.” In an ET op-ed, former Intelligence Bureau officer Avinash Mohananey notes that a fidayeen attack on the Kohat Police Lines on September 18 by Ittehadul Mujahideen Pakistan, a splinter of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), killed around 23 people including 16 policemen, and that mediation by Türkiye’s intelligence chief and a Qatari security official, like China’s effort at Urumqi in April, has not worked. The strikes came as the UN General Assembly meets this week. The syllabus link is GS2 on India and its neighbourhood.

Static syllabus linkage

1. The Durand Line is a colonial boundary that Kabul has never accepted. The line was drawn in 1893 under an agreement between Sir Mortimer Durand, Foreign Secretary of British India, and Amir Abdur Rahman Khan of Afghanistan, and runs for about 2,600 km. It divides Pashtun tribes on both sides, which is why successive Afghan governments, including the Taliban, have refused to treat it as an international border. Pakistan regards it as settled, inherited from British India in 1947. The dispute over its status sits under every present quarrel about fencing, refugees and cross-border militancy.
2. Article 51 is claimed by both sides, and the non-state actor question is unsettled. Article 51 of the UN Charter preserves the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs, until the Security Council has taken the necessary measures, and requires such measures to be reported to the Council at once. Its classic reading applies to attacks by states. Some states argue that it also permits force against non-state groups on another state’s territory when that state is “unwilling or unable” to stop them; many others reject this. Pakistan’s justification for strikes on TTP targets and the Taliban’s counter-claim both rest on this contested reading.
3. The TTP is distinct from the Afghan Taliban but tied to it. The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan was formed in 2007 as an umbrella of Pakistani militant groups fighting the Pakistani state, mainly in the former tribal areas now merged with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It shares ideology and old networks with the Afghan Taliban, which is why Pakistan expected a friendly government in Kabul after 2021 to restrain it. The reverse happened: the TTP gained space, and the Taliban deny that militancy in Pakistan is anything but Pakistan’s internal problem.
4. India’s stake in Afghanistan is built on development, not military presence. India built the Afghan Parliament building in Kabul, the Afghan–India Friendship Dam (Salma Dam) in Herat and the Zaranj–Delaram road linking Afghanistan to Iran, and has used Iran’s Chabahar port to send wheat and aid. India objects to the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor because it passes through Gilgit-Baltistan, which India regards as its own territory under Pakistan’s illegal occupation. UNAMA was created by the UN Security Council in 2002 and reports on civilian casualties and human rights.

Why UPSC loves this

1. India and its neighbourhood is a standing Mains theme. The GS2 syllabus lists “India and its neighbourhood — relations” and “bilateral, regional and global groupings affecting India’s interests”. UPSC has asked about India’s interests in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover and about terrorism emanating from the region. A Pakistan–Afghanistan conflict tests a candidate’s ability to see India’s interests in a quarrel in which India is not a party.
2. Prelims favours places and boundaries. Named lines — Durand Line, McMahon Line, Radcliffe Line — and the provinces or countries they separate are regular Prelims material. Kunar and Paktika border Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and the Wakhan corridor links Afghanistan to China; such map facts are asked more than personalities.
3. International law of force is increasingly relevant. Questions on the UN Charter’s prohibition of force under Article 2(4) and the self-defence exception in Article 51 have become more relevant with several conflicts running at once. The present case gives a clean example of both sides citing the same Article.

Analysis

1. Pakistan is fighting the monster it helped raise, and neither side can win it with airstrikes. For two decades Pakistan’s security establishment treated a Taliban government in Kabul as “strategic depth” against India. The present conflict is the failure of that bet: a friendly Kabul has not restrained the TTP, and the Taliban refuse to treat the Durand Line as a border they must police. Airstrikes can punish, but they cannot compel a government that gains legitimacy at home by defying Islamabad. The Kohat attack, a day after which the TTP killed six soldiers, suggests that strikes are not reducing the violence they are meant to deter.
2. The dispute over facts is itself a dispute over law. Pakistan speaks of 28 militants killed and a “ground operation” against “terrorist hubs”; the Taliban and UNAMA speak of three civilians, including a girl. These are not only rival numbers: under international humanitarian law, the legitimacy of force depends on distinction between fighters and civilians, and under Article 51 on the existence of an armed attack to which it responds. UNAMA’s independent count of 399 civilian casualties between April and June is therefore the most important figure in the story, because it is the only one not produced by a party to the conflict.
3. For India, Pakistan’s western distraction is not a gain to be celebrated. It is tempting to read a two-front problem for Pakistan as relief for India. Mohananey’s own account cuts the other way: an army outsourcing security to “lashkars” of former Afghan soldiers and losing control of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan makes the region less predictable, not more. Instability produces armed men, refugees and arms markets that do not respect borders, and a weakened Pakistani state may seek external adventures to rally domestic support. India’s interest lies in a stable Afghanistan that does not host groups hostile to India, which requires engaging Kabul without appearing to take sides in its quarrel with Islamabad.
4. Other mediators are failing, which opens diplomatic room, not military room. The ET op-ed notes that China’s mediation at Urumqi in April and Türkiye and Qatar’s efforts have not produced results, and that China’s plan to extend CPEC to Kabul remains a pipe dream. China’s frustration matters to India because it limits Beijing’s ability to build an economic bloc across India’s north-west. India has consistent development credentials in Afghanistan — the Parliament building, Salma Dam, Chabahar-linked aid — and can deepen humanitarian and trade engagement. The counter-view is that engagement with the Taliban lends them legitimacy while they restrict women’s education; India has to balance principle with presence.
5. The timing is aimed at New York. The strikes came as the UN General Assembly meets, and the ET says the issue may figure there. Both sides are pitching their case to an international audience: Pakistan as a victim of terrorism exercising self-defence, Afghanistan as a sovereign state under attack. India, which has long argued at the UN that states must not harbour terrorists, will find its own language being used by Pakistan. The Indian position is best served by insisting on a single standard: no territory to be used for terrorism, and no cross-border force in violation of the Charter.

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