When I look at Pakistan’s western border from Karachi, one change worries me more than the familiar language of terrorism.

The argument is no longer confined to Islamabad accusing Kabul of sheltering militants. Aircraft have been used. Border posts have exchanged fire. Afghan officials are protesting violations of sovereignty, while Pakistan increasingly treats militant sanctuaries beyond its frontier as targets it may have to attack itself.

On 21 September, Pakistan said it had carried out “calibrated” strikes against terrorist camps and hideouts in the border region with Afghanistan. The government said three targets were destroyed and more than 28 militants were killed. Afghanistan gave a sharply different account. Its foreign ministry said Pakistani forces violated Afghan airspace and struck locations in Kunar and Paktika provinces. Afghan authorities and the United Nations reported three civilian deaths, according to Reuters.

The dispute did not stop there.

A day later, Pakistani security sources said militants attempted to enter Kurram from Afghanistan. They said Pakistani forces stopped them, after which Afghan Taliban forces opened fire on Pakistani positions. Pakistani troops retaliated against Taliban posts, according to Dawn.

Two neighbouring states that once described each other in the language of brotherhood are now communicating partly through artillery, aircraft and border positions.

The immediate question is obvious.

How far can Pakistan go?

The problem Pakistan cannot ignore

Any serious analysis must begin with an uncomfortable fact. Pakistan has a real terrorism problem.

The Global Terrorism Index 2026 ranked Pakistan as the country most affected by terrorism in 2025. It recorded 1,139 deaths from terrorism during the year, up nearly six per cent from 2024.

The geographical concentration matters even more.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan accounted for more than 74 per cent of terrorist attacks in Pakistan during 2025. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, remained the country’s deadliest terrorist organisation, according to the index. It attributed 637 deaths to the group.

Pakistan therefore does not face an abstract diplomatic disagreement with Afghanistan. Policemen are dying. Soldiers are being attacked. Civilians live with the consequences.

September brought another brutal reminder.

The latest Pakistani strikes followed an attack on the old Police Lines in Kohat that killed more than 20 people and wounded around 100. Pakistani authorities subsequently said the targets struck near the Afghan frontier included a suicide-bomber training centre. Dawn reported that the government said it had taken precautions to avoid civilian casualties.

Kabul rejects Pakistan’s central accusation.

The Afghan foreign ministry said on 21 September that Afghanistan was not responsible for Pakistan’s recent security incidents. It accused Islamabad of using allegations about Afghan territory to justify military action and summoned Pakistan’s chargé d’affaires.

Both positions need to be stated because the factual dispute sits at the centre of the crisis.

Yet Pakistan’s argument is not supported only by Pakistani officials.

The UN evidence complicates Kabul’s denial

The TTP and Afghan Taliban are separate organisations. Treating them as the same movement would be inaccurate.

Their relationship, however, cannot simply be dismissed.

A United Nations sanctions-monitoring report published in late 2025 estimated that the TTP maintained roughly 6,000 fighters in Afghanistan, including in Khost, Kunar, Nangarhar, Paktika and Paktya. The report said the Taliban continued to provide the TTP with logistical and operational space and financial support. The UN Security Council continues to list the TTP as a sanctioned terrorist organisation.

That evidence does not automatically validate every Pakistani target or every military claim.

It does make a blanket denial of a TTP presence in Afghanistan difficult to reconcile with UN reporting.

Islamabad has consequently hardened its position.

Pakistan’s Foreign Office said in August that it remained open to state-level dialogue but wanted “tangible and verifiable” Afghan counterterrorism measures. In early September, after China’s special envoy visited Islamabad, the Foreign Office again said that improvement in relations depended on concrete Afghan action against the TTP and other militant organisations.

Military pressure is therefore operating alongside diplomacy.

The danger lies in what happens when pressure fails.

Pakistan has already crossed this threshold once

September’s strikes did not appear from nowhere.

The two countries came dangerously close to a much wider conflict earlier this year.

In February, Pakistani and Afghan forces fought along their roughly 2,600-kilometre frontier after Pakistan struck what it described as militant camps. Kabul retaliated. Both governments announced heavy enemy casualties that independent observers could not verify.

The confrontation became much more serious when Pakistan struck targets in Afghanistan, including Kabul and Kandahar. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif publicly described the situation as “open war”, while Afghan authorities threatened further retaliation. Reuters reported that Qatar and other states were trying to contain the confrontation.

There was also a civilian cost.

UNAMA said Pakistani strikes in eastern Afghanistan on 21 and 22 February killed at least 13 civilians and injured seven, according to Reuters.

September therefore looks less like an isolated operation and more like another turn in an established cycle.

A militant attack occurs in Pakistan. Islamabad attributes the threat to networks operating from Afghanistan. Pakistan uses force. Kabul condemns the action and threatens retaliation.

Then the border heats up.

Each round makes the next one easier to imagine.

Military superiority does not solve the strategic problem

Pakistan possesses conventional military capabilities far beyond those available to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

That does not mean a prolonged confrontation would be easy to win.

Afghanistan has taught powerful states an unpleasant lesson for decades: conventional superiority and political control are different things. Pakistan does not need to occupy Afghanistan to encounter this problem. Repeated cross-border operations could still generate retaliation, militant recruitment and diplomatic costs.

There is another difficulty.

What is the political objective?

If the objective is to destroy an identified militant camp preparing an imminent attack, military action has a relatively narrow purpose.

If the objective is to compel the Taliban government to sever its relationship with the TTP, the problem becomes much harder. Air strikes can destroy buildings. They cannot easily rewrite relationships formed through years of insurgency, ideology and personal networks.

Pakistan can increase the cost of Taliban tolerance of the TTP.

Whether it can increase that cost enough to change Kabul’s behaviour without creating a sustained interstate conflict is a different question.

That is where strategy becomes more important than firepower.

China has a problem too

Beijing has been trying to keep the two neighbours talking.

China’s special envoy for Afghanistan, Yue Xiaoyong, visited Islamabad from 31 August to 1 September. Pakistan’s Foreign Office publicly welcomed China’s engagement and said it remained open to constructive dialogue.

China has reasons to worry.

Persistent instability threatens regional connectivity and Chinese interests in Pakistan. It also complicates Beijing’s attempt to develop workable relations with Taliban-controlled Afghanistan while maintaining its strategic partnership with Islamabad.

China can facilitate talks.

It cannot manufacture trust.

Pakistan wants verifiable action against militants. Kabul resists Pakistani pressure and treats cross-border strikes as violations of Afghan sovereignty. Neither problem disappears because diplomats meet in a third country.

The border is also an economic weapon

Military escalation does not remain on the battlefield.

Afghanistan has historically depended heavily on Pakistan for transit and trade. Repeated border disruptions are changing that relationship.

The World Bank’s Afghanistan Economic Monitor reported that the closure of the Pakistan border, combined with wider regional instability, had pushed Afghan trade toward alternative routes through Central Asia. These routes generally cost more and take longer.

Something else happened.

Iran became increasingly important.

By February 2026, Iran accounted for 31.1 per cent of Afghanistan’s imports, according to the World Bank. Pakistan accounted for only 8.1 per cent.

That should concern Islamabad for reasons beyond commerce.

Every prolonged closure encourages Afghan traders to build supply chains that bypass Pakistan. A border restriction intended to pressure Kabul can therefore reduce Pakistan’s own long-term economic leverage.

Security policy has a balance sheet.

Pakistan cannot ignore it.

Then there are the Afghans being sent back

The human movement across this frontier adds another layer to the confrontation.

UNHCR and IOM data show that about 705,400 Afghans returned from Pakistan during 2026 by 12 September. The total includes people leaving under different legal circumstances, not simply deportations. Around 66,100 returns from Pakistan were classified as deportations.

Those numbers matter because border policy, refugee policy and security policy increasingly overlap.

Pakistan has legitimate authority to enforce its immigration laws. At the same time, moving hundreds of thousands of people into an economically fragile Afghanistan places pressure on communities already struggling to absorb returnees.

A security confrontation can easily turn ordinary Afghans into instruments of state pressure.

That would solve little.

Islamabad’s real choice is not war or weakness

Pakistani debate often reduces security questions to two positions.

Strike back, or appear weak.

The actual choices are more complicated.

Pakistan has a right to protect its citizens from armed groups. It also needs intelligence strong enough to distinguish between actionable militant targets and claims that cannot survive independent scrutiny. Civilian casualties inside Afghanistan would strengthen Kabul’s diplomatic case and weaken Pakistan’s.

Military force therefore needs a political boundary.

Islamabad should know what specific Afghan action would be sufficient to reduce military pressure. Kabul needs to know the consequences of refusing it. China and other intermediaries can be useful only if negotiations move from broad promises toward mechanisms that can actually be checked.

Pakistan itself used the correct word in August: verifiable.

Verification could matter more than another angry communiqué.

The most dangerous outcome is a permanent low-level war

Sitting in Karachi, the Afghan frontier can feel far away. It is not.

Violence in Kurram or Paktika eventually appears elsewhere in Pakistan through military spending, disrupted trade and political pressure. Sometimes it reaches our cities through terrorism.

Pakistan cannot simply accept militant sanctuaries across its frontier.

But Pakistan should also remember what its objective is.

The objective is not to punish Afghanistan. It is to make Pakistan safer.

Those two things are not necessarily the same.

If carefully targeted operations destroy an imminent threat, they may produce a security gain. If repeated strikes deepen Taliban hostility without materially weakening the TTP, Pakistan could find itself fighting militants while simultaneously creating a hostile Afghan state on its western border.

That would be a strategic failure regardless of how many targets were destroyed.

The events of 21 and 22 September have therefore brought Pakistan back to a question it confronted in February.

How much force is enough?

Nobody in Islamabad should assume that the answer is simply more.