PAKISTAN ’S NEWEST WAR, AFGHANISTAN

The hardened fighters of the Taliban will resort to standard hit-and-run tactics, striking targets ina slow bleed that could tie down the Pakistani army interminably.

- AJAY SINGH

The inmates at the drug rehabilitation facility in Kabul were just breaking their iftar fast, when the Pakistani air attack struck.

The Pakistani aircraft were ostensibly trying to hit a Taliban ammunition dump, but, when the smoke and debris cleared around 400 persons were killed and 265 wounded in what was Pakistan's deadliest attack on civilians in Afghanistan. The only saving grace of the carnage was that it finally forced the two battling neighbours to call off the fighting for the holy day of Eid. But this temporary ceasefire is unlikely to bring an end to the conflict. If anything, it could only intensify thereafter.

This is not the first time that the two sides have clashed. Fighting had broken out between Afghanistan and Pakistan last October, when Pakistan launched airstrikes deep inside Afghan territory, in retaliation for a spate of attacks by Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) cadres in Pakistan. Those attacks targeting the TTP bases and their chief Noor Wali Mehsud, achieved little, but caused civilian casualties on ground. Mehsud emerged unscathed the next day, promising revenge. Afghan retaliation saw cross-border firing with small arms, machine guns and even artillery across the 2,640-kilometre-long Durand Line (which the Taliban do not recognise and call “The Hypothetical Line”). Pakistani army posts and police stations were attacked and captured soldiers paraded. The ten-day conflict finally came to an end with a ceasefire brokered by Turkey and Qatar, but the sporadic fighting continued. And if anything, the wave of attacks by the TTP inside Pakistan only intensified.