Pakistan Strikes Seven Terrorist Hideouts in Afghanistan: The Full Context

Pakistan Strikes Seven Terrorist Hideouts

In a midnight military operation in the early hours of Sunday, February 22, Pakistan’s armed forces conducted airstrikes targeting seven terrorist camps and hideouts along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border — the most significant cross-border military action by Islamabad since an October 2025 confrontation that left over 200 Taliban soldiers and 23 Pakistani troops dead.​

What Happened on the Ground

Pakistani Air Force jets struck multiple locations across two Afghan provinces simultaneously. In Paktika, strikes hit a religious seminary in the Bermal district and additional targets in the Argun district. In Nangarhar, multiple airstrikes hit Khogyani, Bahsod, and Ghani Khel districts. Pakistan’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting stated the operation was conducted “with precision and accuracy” as a direct retributive response to a series of suicide bombings inside Pakistan during the holy month of Ramadan.

The Afghan Taliban government pushed back immediately and forcefully. Spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid stated on X: “Last night, they bombed our civilian compatriots in Nangarhar and Paktika provinces, martyring and wounding dozens of people, including women and children.” Afghanistan’s Defence Ministry described the strikes as a violation of sovereignty and international law, and vowed an “appropriate and measured response.” India Today reported that at least 17 members of a single family were killed in the strikes — a detail that starkly illustrates the civilian cost of cross-border operations regardless of their intended precision.

The Attacks That Triggered Pakistan’s Response

Pakistan’s strikes did not emerge from a vacuum. In the days immediately preceding the operation, a sequence of devastating suicide attacks hit Pakistani soil in rapid succession during Ramadan. A Shia mosque in Islamabad was targeted. Suicide bombers struck in Bajaur and twice in the Bannu area of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. The most recent attack, on Saturday, killed an army lieutenant colonel and a soldier in Bannu.

Pakistan’s Ministry of Information stated it holds “conclusive evidence” that all these attacks were orchestrated by Fitna al Khwarij (FAK) — Islamabad’s official designation for the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) — on the instructions of Afghanistan-based leadership. Responsibility for the attacks was also claimed by the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP). Both groups operate from Afghan soil, according to Pakistani intelligence, and both were listed as primary targets in Sunday’s operation.​

Who Are Fitna al Khwarij and ISKP?

Understanding the targets requires understanding these two organisations. Fitna al Khwarij is the name Pakistan’s government officially uses for the TTP — the Pakistani Taliban — rebranding them with a religiously loaded term meaning “the strife of the Kharijites,” framing the group as heretics rather than legitimate political actors. The TTP seeks to establish its own Islamic Emirate inside Pakistan, modelled on the Afghan Taliban’s Emirate, and has used Afghan soil as a staging ground for increasingly lethal attacks since 2021.​

The relationship between the Afghan Taliban and the TTP is central to the entire crisis. Pakistan backed the Afghan Taliban’s return to power in 2021, expecting that Kabul would then rein in the TTP. Instead, the Afghan Taliban has consistently denied that the TTP operates from its soil — a denial Pakistan and independent analysts find entirely unconvincing given the TTP’s operational tempo. In 2025 alone, TTP carried out over 600 attacks on Pakistani territory, mainly in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, killing both security personnel and civilians.

A Relationship in Free Fall

The Pakistan-Afghanistan relationship has deteriorated dramatically since 2021. Pakistan has repeatedly urged the Afghan Taliban regime to take “verifiable measures” to prevent terrorist groups from using Afghan territory as a launch pad — and has repeatedly been rebuffed. The October 2025 escalation — in which Pakistan struck Kabul directly, targeting the residence of TTP leader Noor Wali Mehsud — marked a fundamental policy shift. Pakistan had, for the first time, shown willingness to confront the Afghan regime head-on rather than confine its military responses to the border region.​

Sunday’s strikes represent a return to border-area targeting rather than deep-strike operations, but the scale — seven simultaneous targets across two provinces — and the timing during Ramadan signal that Islamabad has now established a pattern of retaliatory action that it will sustain regardless of diplomatic fallout. Pakistan’s Dawn reported that the government’s statement explicitly warned the Afghan Taliban to “honour its responsibilities,” while also calling on the international community to pressure Kabul to comply with its Doha Agreement commitments not to allow Afghan soil to be used against other countries.​

The Doha Agreement Dimension

Pakistan’s invocation of the 2020 Doha Agreement is legally and diplomatically significant. The agreement, signed between the Afghan Taliban and the United States, included a commitment by the Taliban not to allow Afghan territory to be used by any group to threaten the security of other countries. Pakistan is now effectively arguing that the international community — including the US, which brokered the deal — has an obligation to hold the Afghan Taliban accountable for systematically violating that commitment. Whether this argument gains any traction in Washington, where the Trump administration has had its own complex and evolving relationship with the Afghan Taliban, remains to be seen.​

The Civilian Toll and the Proportionality Question

The most immediate and unresolved tension in Pakistan’s position is between its claim of “precision and accuracy” and the Afghan government’s assertion that women and children are among the dead. The airstrike on a religious seminary in Bermal, reported by Tolo News, is particularly sensitive — a madrassa is simultaneously a plausible militant training infrastructure site and a place where non-combatant students are likely to be present. This ambiguity is not new in the history of cross-border counter-terrorism operations, but it will shape international reactions and Afghanistan’s promised “measured response” in the days ahead.

What Comes Next

The cycle of violence between Pakistan and Afghanistan is now deeply entrenched. Pakistan has established that it will strike cross-border when its security forces are hit and diplomatic channels have failed. Afghanistan has established that it will condemn and threaten retaliation while denying that its soil hosts the attackers. Neither position is sustainable as a long-term strategy. Regional actors — China, which has deep ties with both governments, and the Gulf states, which have mediated previously — are the most likely external parties capable of pushing the two sides back towards a negotiated mechanism. Without that external pressure, Sunday’s midnight strikes look less like a decisive intervention and more like the latest chapter in a crisis with no end in sight.