After the two sides clashed along the disputed border for days that left dozens dead and wounded, Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi said that all of Afghanistan’s neighbours are happy with the country except for Pakistan.

A full-blown conflict between Afghanistan’s Taliban and neighboring Pakistan seemed unthinkable when the hard-line Islamist group, a longtime ally of Islamabad, seized power in 2021 as international troops withdrew and the government their supported collapsed.

The Taliban government has confirmed that it attacked Pakistani troops in multiple mountainous locations on the northern border. Casualties are not yet clear in what the Taliban called "retaliatory operations", after it said Pakistan violated Afghan airspace and bombed a market inside its border on Thursday.

A fierce clash erupted overnight between the militaries of Afghanistan, under the Taliban government, and Pakistan, marking one of the most intense confrontations between the neighboring countries in recent years.

What began as airstrikes by Pakistan on Afghan territory has spiralled into a full-blown military clash, exposing the collapse of Islamabad’s once-vaunted control over the Taliban.

Pakistan uprooted the Taliban with U.S. help in the 2010s. But the insurgency has resurfaced with assistance from the Afghan Taliban.

However, Muttaqi on Sunday warned Pakistan that Kabul has "other options" if it does not want peace, amid border clashes that have left over 50 Pakistani soldiers killed, and 19 Afghan border posts captured by Pakistan.

The ISI, long the architect and backer of militant networks in the region, including the Deobandi stronghold Afghan Taliban and TTP, appears to be losing its influence over both.