Pakistan's Defence Minister Khawaja Asif declared "open war" against Afghanistan on February 27, 2026, hours after Pakistani warplanes struck targets in Kabul and Kandahar overnight. The statement represents a dramatic escalation from what had been framed as counter-terrorism operations into direct military conflict between two states sharing a contested 2,600-kilometre border.
The declaration follows Pakistan's launch of "Operation Ghazab Lil Haq" (Wrath for the Truth) on February 26, a response to what Islamabad described as a large-scale Afghan military operation the same day. For Pakistan, a country that once provided critical support to the Taliban's return to power, to now engage in conventional strikes against major Afghan cities signals the complete breakdown of a relationship built on strategic convergence but undermined by fundamental contradictions over militant safe havens.
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Pakistani airstrikes on February 27 targeted infrastructure in Afghanistan's two largest cities, marking the first time Pakistan has conducted operations beyond border zones since the Taliban's 2021 takeover. The strikes came at the end of a week-long escalation that began with Pakistani air raids on February 21-22 against what Islamabad identified as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Islamic State-Khorasan Province camps inside Afghan territory.
Afghanistan's Taliban government and Pakistan have issued sharply divergent accounts of ground engagements. Afghan officials claim 55 Pakistani soldiers were killed and multiple border posts captured during fighting on February 26. Pakistan's military flatly denies these figures, stating only two soldiers died while claiming 133 Afghan fighters were killed. Neither side has provided independently verified evidence. The casualty dispute itself illustrates how quickly this conflict has moved beyond manageable friction into a propaganda war that complicates any diplomatic off-ramp. The core grievance—Pakistan's accusation that the Taliban provides sanctuary to the TTP, which launches attacks into Pakistani territory—has been a source of tension since 2021, but recent coordinated assaults demonstrated the scale of the threat Islamabad faces from groups operating across the Durand Line.
Members are reading: How China's response and Taliban internal dynamics could determine whether this escalates into sustained conventional warfare.
The declaration of "open war" formalizes what the past week's military actions already demonstrated: the collapse of Pakistan's contradictory approach to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. What began as border management and counter-terrorism has crossed into state-on-state conflict, with airstrikes on major cities representing a threshold Islamabad had previously avoided. The speed of escalation—from targeted raids to a defence minister's war declaration in under a week—suggests both governments have lost control of the escalation ladder, raising the prospect of a protracted conflict neither can easily afford but both now struggle to de-escalate.
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