Pakistani Air Strikes Kill Nine in Afghanistan, Kabul Says
Pakistan’s information ministry said it had hit “camps and hideouts” used by armed groups in two Afghan provinces and killed an estimated 22 fighters. Kabul gave an entirely different account, saying the strikes on Kunar and Helmand late on Wednesday killed nine people, all of them women and children, wounded eleven and destroyed three houses. Neither set of claims has been independently verified.
The two accounts cannot be reconciled, and that is the established pattern rather than a novelty: Islamabad counts fighters, Kabul counts civilians, and nobody independent has the access to establish which is nearer the truth. The Taliban government’s spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid condemned the strikes as “an aggression and crime in violation of all accepted principles”. The geography is the detail worth holding: Shultan district sits in Kunar in the north-east, on the Pakistani border, and Garmser in Helmand is in the deep south, so striking both on the same night points to a planned operation rather than a reprisal for one incident. It also breaks roughly three months of relative calm. Pakistan’s standing grievance is that the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, which mounts attacks inside Pakistan, shelters across the Afghan border; Kabul denies hosting it, and each round of strikes hardens the denial. Watch whether Kabul closes the Torkham or Chaman crossings, the lever it reaches for and the one that does most damage to Pakistani trade.