Pakistan Strikes 10 Targets in Afghanistan in Second Wave in a Week
Pakistan launched airstrikes on 10 targets in Afghanistan on 24 September, the second wave in a week. Afghanistan's Taliban government said four civilians were killed. BBC
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the strikes hit Kandahar, Paktia and Khost provinces. Sources told the BBC the strikes hit provinces including Kandahar. In Paktia, an official said jets bombed the Afghan Armed Forces' 203 Mansouri Corps controlled by the Taliban.
Pakistan said its forces had struck 10 targets and that the strikes were strictly limited to identified military objectives, meaning military sites rather than civilian areas. Pakistan said the 24 September strikes targeted 10 locations used to store and launch drones, and described the operation as launched over drone attacks. Reuters
Pakistan's Information Minister Attaullah Tarar called the strikes "deliberate, precise, calibrated and proportionate," terms that in military language mean careful, accurate and limited.
Islamabad framed the action in legal terms of self-defence, the claimed right to use force to protect itself from attack. Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a press release titled "Pakistan's Actions in Self-Defence against Terrorist Attacks and Military Provocations from Afghanistan". Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs In that release, Pakistan stated that it reiterates its resolve to uproot terrorism emanating from Afghanistan.
The strikes came after a deadly attack on a police facility in Pakistan on 18 September. Pakistan said earlier in the week it launched air strikes in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region killing 28 militants. That earlier operation hit three targets, which Pakistan said killed 28 terrorists and suicide bombers. The Afghan Taliban and the United Nations reported three civilian deaths from those earlier airstrikes. Reuters
Both capitals paired force with warning. The Taliban said there would be an appropriate response following the strikes. Pakistan said any further provocative act would be responded to.
The broader context here is an escalation cycle conducted through calibrated language. Proportionality, precision and limitation to military objectives are terms of restraint. They also preserve latitude for further action. Each side is narrating its use of force as reactive, bounded and lawful, while leaving the definition of provocation open.
Looking at what this means for crisis management, the variables are verification and control. Civilian casualty claims and military objective claims cannot be reconciled from competing communiques. The shift from three targets in the earlier strikes to 10 locations in the latest strikes widens the geographic footprint to three provinces. That increases the political pressure on Kabul to answer, and the operational risk that a retaliatory strike hits Pakistani personnel or civilians and triggers another round.
