Pakistan, Taliban and Afghanistan
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By the end of the meeting, Field Marshal Munir reportedly left his commanders with a grim warning: the army must “regain control and restore strategic depth before it’s too late.”
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.
In a major setback following coordinated attacks by Afghan Taliban fighters on military posts along the Durand Line, Pakistan’s army chief, General Asim Munir, held an emergency meeting at GHQ Rawalpindi and demanded an intelligence report.
Pakistan uprooted the Taliban with U.S. help in the 2010s. But the insurgency has resurfaced with assistance from the Afghan Taliban.
The Taliban government accuses Pakistan of bombing Kabul and a market in eastern Afghanistan. A blast occurred Thursday night in Kabul near key government buildings.
A suspected attack by militants on a polio vaccine team in northwestern Pakistan has left one police guard dead. Tuesday's attack in the Matta area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, once a stronghold
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.