A worker clear rubble with an excavator as a police officer and local residents gather at the site of overnight suicide bombing at a security post in Fatah Khel, in Bannu, a district in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, Sunday, May 10, 2026.
| Photo Credit: AP

Residents inspect the site of a strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, Friday, March 13, 2026.
| Photo Credit: AP

A Pakistani Minister on Sunday (March 1) announced that the operation against the Afghan Taliban was continuing, refuting social media reports about the conclusion of the blitz.

Federal Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Dr. Tariq Fazal Chaudhry refuted reports that Pakistan halted its operations, saying that “false and fabricated news is being spread on social media that Pakistan has stopped its operations against Afghanistan”.

“The reality is the opposite. In view of the current regional situation, the sharing of PAF and drone footage with the media has been temporarily suspended. The purpose of this decision is to safeguard national security and operational strategy, not to prevent operations,” he wrote on X.

-PTI

Local residents, who fled their homes following border clashes between Pakistan and Afghan forces, wait for transportation in Chaman, a town on the Pakistan side of the border. File.
| Photo Credit: AP

Afghanistan’s embassy in Pakistan said around 800 Afghans living in the capital have been detained by authorities, including some who are registered with the UN’s refugee agency.

It warned in a statement late on Monday (January 7, 2025) that uncertainty around the visa process for Afghans in Pakistan has caused “troubling cases of arbitrary detention and deportation”.

Islamabad has cracked down on undocumented Afghans as political tensions with Kabul have increased, forcing more than 7,80,000 Afghans back across the border since the end of 2023 — including some who have lived in Pakistan for decades.

“The Embassy of Afghanistan expresses its deep concern over the recent detention of approximately 800 Afghan nationals in Islamabad,” it said on social media platform X.

“This has caused the tragic separation of families, including women and children, many of whom remain stranded in Pakistan.”

The statement said the number included 137 Afghans with pending visa extension requests or who are temporarily registered with the UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency.

The embassy was “alarmed by reports of unwarranted arrests, home searches, and extortion targeting Afghan nationals”, it said.

Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry has not responded to requests for comment.

More than 6,00,000 Afghans have fled to Pakistan since the Afghan Taliban regained control of Kabul in August 2021, including tens of thousands on the advice of Western nations with the promise of relocation.

Many are forced by embassies to wait for months in guest houses in Islamabad while their cases are processed and have reported a rise in harassment by police in recent weeks.

The Pakistan government said its deportation campaign is a bid to improve security after a rise in militancy in the border regions.

But Afghans say they are being targeted because of a political falling-out between Islamabad and Kabul.

“The Afghans in Pakistan awaiting immigration are going through so much pain,” Umer Ijaz Gilani, a lawyer who represents Afghans, told AFP.

Millions of Afghans have fled into Pakistan to escape successive conflicts over decades, becoming deeply ingrained in Pakistani society.

According to the UNHCR, Pakistan currently hosts some 1.5 million Afghan refugees and asylum-seekers, alongside more than 1.5 million Afghans of different legal statuses.

Pakistan has given a series of short-term extensions to Afghans with registered refugee status, currently due to expire in June 2025.

Representative image.
| Photo Credit: AFP

The Pakistan government has removed its special representative to Afghanistan Asif Durrani, amid heightened tensions between Islamabad and Kabul, media reports said on Saturday (September 14, 2024).

According to an official notification, Mr. Durrani was “relieved of his responsibilities as Special Representative on Afghanistan in Management Position” on September 10, The Express Tribune newspaper reported.

No official reason was given for the move.

However, citing sources, the report said Mr. Durrani, who was appointed to the post in May 2023, failed to make an impact on the Pakistan-Afghanistan relationship. It also said Mr. Durrani had no acceptability in Kabul as he only had a handful of engagements with the Taliban-led interim government.

Other sources said that Mr. Durrani had few tools at his disposal, given the overall strategy being followed by Pakistan.

The Dawn newspaper reported the country’s powerful military was unhappy with his performance, and Mr. Durrani, too, had grown frustrated as his policy advice was regularly ignored by his principals.

Mr. Durrani confirmed his departure in a text message, expressing gratitude to the leadership for allowing him to serve Pakistan, according to the report.

The post of the special envoy for Afghanistan was created in June 2020 after the US-Taliban Doha Accord. It engaged with the Taliban and other countries involved in Afghanistan.

Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have lately become strained, largely because of frequent attacks by the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) but also due to frequent border skirmishes.

There has been an uptick in the incidents of terrorism in Pakistan since the Taliban took over the government in Kabul in 2021, dashing hopes in Islamabad that a friendly government in Afghanistan would help to tackle militancy.

The Pakistani government has repeatedly accused the banned TTP of operating from sanctuaries in Afghanistan, a claim denied by the Afghan Taliban.

Relations between the two countries have lately become strained, largely because of the TTP but also due to frequent border skirmishes.

And 600,000 have arrived since the Taliban seized power in Kabul in August 2021 and imposed their austere version of Islamic law. Image for representation purpose only. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Pakistan’s plan to evict hundreds of thousands of Afghan migrants is “unacceptable”, Taliban authorities said Wednesday, denying allegations by Islamabad its citizens were responsible for a string of suicide attacks there.

Around 1.3 million Afghans are registered refugees in Pakistan and 880,000 more have legal status to remain, according to the latest United Nations figures.

But caretaker Interior Minister Sarfraz Bugti said Tuesday a further 1.7 million Afghans were in Pakistan illegally, giving a November 1 deadline to return home or face deportation.

The order comes as Pakistan grapples with a rise in attacks the government blames on militants operating from Afghanistan, a charge Kabul routinely denies.

“The behaviour of Pakistan against Afghan refugees is unacceptable,” Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid wrote on social media site X.

“Afghan refugees are not involved in Pakistan’s security problems. As long as they leave Pakistan voluntarily, that country should tolerate them.”

Bugti claimed Afghan nationals were responsible for 14 of 24 suicide attacks in Pakistan since January.

“We deny all these claims because Afghans have migrated to other countries for their safety, their security,” said Abdul Mutalib Haqqani, spokesman for the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation.

“It’s natural when someone migrates to another country for his safety, he would never want insecurity there,” he told AFP.

Legions of Afghans have migrated to neighbouring Pakistan over decades of conflict during the Soviet invasion, the following civil war and the U.S.-led occupation.

And 600,000 have arrived since the Taliban seized power in Kabul in August 2021 and imposed their austere version of Islamic law.

Taliban authorities have been trying to tempt back those who left, despite the nation suffering from a massive scaleback of aid following the collapse of the U.S.-backed government.

Rights monitors have also reported reprisal killings and disappearances.

“Internally work is underway to ensure the capacity for Afghans coming back to the country, so that they live in their country in a peaceful atmosphere,” Haqqani told AFP.

File photo of a general view of the border post in Torkham, Pakistan
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Pakistani authorities closed a key border crossing with landlocked Afghanistan on September 6 shortly after border guards from the two sides exchanged fire, officials and residents said, in a sign of increasing tensions between the two neighbors.

Reasons why the two sides exchanged fire were not immediately made clear, said Nasrullah Khan, an official in Torkham, a town in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

He said Pakistani government and military officials were in contact with their Afghan counterparts to defuse tensions.

Abdul Mateen Qani, the Afghan Taliban-appointed spokesman for the Interior Ministry, confirmed the clash between Afghan and Pakistani forces. He said officials from both sides were attempting to find out what caused the clash and ways to prevent such incidents in the future.

Pakistani authorities said dozens of trucks carrying perishable items, including vegetables and fruits, were waiting on both sides of the border for the reopening of the Torkham crossing, which is a vital commercial artery and trade route to Central Asian countries for Pakistan.

The border closure comes two days after caretaker Pakistani Prime Minister Anwaar ul Haq Kakar said U.S. military equipment left behind during the American withdrawal from Afghanistan had fallen into militant hands and made its way to the Pakistani Taliban.

The Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, have intensified attacks over the past months on Pakistan security forces. They are a separate group but an ally of the Afghan Taliban.

The Afghan Taliban overran Afghanistan in August 2021 as U.S. and NATO troops were in the last weeks of a chaotic pullout from the country after 20 years of war.

The Pakistani Taliban have released statements and video clips in recent months claiming they possess weapons such as guns with laser and thermal imaging systems.

Torkham witnessed previous clashes in February and the town remained closed for several days after the two sides accused each other of trying to build new posts along the border in February.

According to the Pakistan-Afghanistan Joint Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the clashes at the time caused millions in losses to traders whose perishable goods were ruined.

Afghanistan has never recognized the porous border that runs through the Pashtun heartland and dilutes the power of Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group on both sides.

Pakistan says it has completed fencing along 97% of the border to stop cross-border attacks and smuggling. Pakistan also accuses the Afghan Taliban of providing sanctuaries to Pakistani militants who are living in Afghanistan.

Also on Wednesday, a mortar hit a house near the Afghan border, killing five Pakistanis— a mother and her four children. It was not immediately clear who fired the mortar and police officers were still investigating, local authorities said.

Currently, Pakistani security forces are carrying out intelligence-based operations against insurgency in the region. Militants often fire mortars to target security forces deployed in the region, and it has caused civilian casualties as well in recent years.

In November 2022, the Pakistani Taliban ended a monthslong cease-fire with the government in Islamabad, ordering its fighters to resume attacks across the country.