Russia and Iran urge peace and dialogue amid Pakistan–Afghanistan ‘open war’
“A nation’s strength isn’t just soldiers, but the peace of mind of its families,” a Pakistani father whispered, hoping his sons never have to prove that strength.
The night sky over Kabul turned orange just before dawn. The sound came second—a deafening roar that rattled windows and shook families from their sleep. For the people of Afghanistan’s capital, already haunted by decades of war, the bombs brought a terrifying realization: the enemy this time was not a distant global power, but their next-door neighbor, Pakistan.
By the time the sun rose on Friday, February 27, the word “war” was no longer a diplomatic threat. It was official. Pakistan’s Defence Minister declared the two nations in an “open war,” as fighter jets struck targets not just in Kabul, but in Kandahar and Paktia province as well. The attacks, named Operation Ghazab lil Haq—”Wrath for the Truth”—had begun.
In a smoky room in Islamabad, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar briefed reporters with cold precision. At least 133 Afghan Taliban fighters were dead, he said. More than 200 wounded. The numbers were stark, but behind each digit was a family waking up to an empty bed.
The cycle of violence had spun out of control just 24 hours earlier. On Thursday night, Afghan forces attacked Pakistani border troops—a retaliation, they said, for earlier Pakistani strikes. Pakistan responded not with pinpricks, but with a sledgehammer. The border, already largely shut since deadly clashes in October that killed over 70 people on both sides, became a front line.
In Kabul, Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid stood amid the wreckage of a struck neighborhood. His voice was measured, but the message was clear: this aggression would not go unanswered. Rubble lay scattered where homes once stood. Rescue workers, volunteers with no helmets and too few gloves, dug through debris with their bare hands, pulling out the living and the dead.
Among them was Ahmad, a shopkeeper in his fifties who lost his brother in the strike. He sat on a shattered curb, dust coating his turban, staring at nothing. “We have lived through Americans, through Soviets, through civil war,” he whispered. “But to be bombed by our brothers? This cuts deeper than any foreign bomb.”
In Pakistan, the narrative was different. Officials spoke of sovereignty and retaliation. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, standing before cameras, declared that Pakistan’s armed forces would “crush” any aggressor. But in the border towns of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, ordinary Pakistanis whispered fears of what comes next. A father in Peshawar, who gave only his first name, Bilal, worried about his two sons of conscription age. “They say they will defend the nation. I just want them to come home for dinner.”
The airstrikes mark a dramatic escalation in a relationship that has always been fraught. Afghanistan and Pakistan share a porous, 2,600-kilometer border—the Durand Line—drawn by British colonizers and disputed ever since. For decades, Pakistan hosted millions of Afghan refugees. For years, it sheltered Taliban leaders, hoping for influence in Kabul. But that complex, often cynical partnership has now shattered.
The Taliban’s return to power in 2021 was initially seen in Islamabad as an opportunity. Instead, border clashes increased. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a militant group separate from but allied with the Afghan Taliban, has intensified attacks on Pakistani security forces from safe havens in Afghanistan. Pakistan accuses the Afghan government of harboring them. The Afghan Taliban insists it does not allow its territory to be used against anyone. Neither side believes the other.
Now, the region holds its breath. Russia, watching the chaos unfold near its own sphere of influence, offered a tentative hand. The Russian Foreign Ministry announced it would consider providing mediation between the two warring neighbors. But diplomacy moves slowly; bombs move fast.
In the villages along the border, where families share languages, tribes, and even bloodlines across the artificial line, the war feels like a family feud turned bloody. A woman in Spin Boldak, on the Afghan side, clutched her children as Pakistani jets screamed overhead. “Why are we killing each other?”
It is a question no general or minister has yet answered. As night falls again on Kabul and Islamabad, the only certainty is that more families will be burying their dead. And in the silence between bomb blasts, the only sound is the weeping of those caught in the middle.