On Feb. 22, 2026, a Pakistani airstrike hit the village of Girdi Kas in eastern Afghanistan. As one family lost 18 of its 23 members, Pakistan termed it a targeted counterterrorism operation against militant hideouts. Afghanistan, in contrast, said the strikes hit civilian homes and a religious school. The United Nations confirmed credible reports of civilian casualties, including women and children.
Five days later, Pakistan’s defense minister declared “open war” as Pakistani warplanes struck Kabul, Kandahar, and targets at the former American air base at Bagram, though the Taliban denied significant damage. Afghanistan retaliated with drone strikes and cross-border offensives. Both sides claimed to have killed hundreds.
“They have a great prime minister, a great general,” Trump declared, that same day. “Pakistan is doing terrifically well.”
The State Department backed Pakistan’s “right to defend itself against attacks from the Taliban, a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group.” Three days later, the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran, and the Pakistan-Afghanistan war vanished from the news.
Yet Pakistan is now fighting on three fronts.
To the northwest, an open war with Afghanistan. To the southwest, an escalating insurgency across the province of Balochistan, where separatist militants launched coordinated attacks across a dozen cities in January, killing nearly 200 people. To the east, an unresolved military standoff with India following their brief war last May – the heaviest engagement between the two nuclear powers since 1971.
Meanwhile, the United States is entangled on every side: backing Pakistan’s military against the Taliban while partnered strategically with the India that hosts the Taliban, that Pakistan accuses of fueling the Baloch insurgency, and that just went to war with Pakistan last year. Yet the U.S. is too busy bombing Iran to notice.
Pakistan shares a 1,600-mile border with Afghanistan to the northwest – a contested colonial-era line that splits the Pashtun population and that no Afghan government has ever recognized. Its southwestern province of Balochistan, the country’s largest and poorest, borders both Afghanistan and Iran and sits atop vast reserves of coal, gold, copper, and gas. To the east lies India, with the disputed territory of Kashmir the eternal sore point between them.
Three borders. Three conflicts.
The Afghan Front
The Pakistani Taliban (TTP) is a militant group distinct from the Afghan Taliban that governs Afghanistan. Operating from bases along the Afghan border, the TTP has waged an escalating campaign of bombings and armed attacks inside Pakistan.
In 2025, Pakistan suffered its most violent year in nearly a decade, with a 34 percent increase in terrorist attacks. In January 2026, a suicide bomber hit a Shia mosque in Islamabad, killing 36 worshippers. In February, TTP fighters attacked a military checkpoint in the border district of Bajaur, killing 11 soldiers and a child.
Pakistan demanded the Taliban government shut down the TTP. The Taliban denied harboring them.
The Feb. 22 airstrikes targeted seven alleged militant camps along the Afghan border, which Pakistan called “intelligence-based, selective operations.” Afghan officials reported 18 civilian dead in the first wave alone. On Feb. 26, Afghanistan launched retaliatory strikes against Pakistani military positions along the border. Pakistan responded by bombing Kabul.
“Our patience has now run out,” said Defense Minister Khawaja Asif. “Now it is open war between us.” As of early March, heavy shelling continued along the border and tens of thousands of civilians had been displaced.
Pakistan helped create the Taliban in the early 1990s – with fighters hardened by the CIA-funded war against the Soviets in the 1980s – supported them through their rise to power, and welcomed the American withdrawal that put them back in charge in 2021. What Pakistan did not anticipate was that the Taliban, once in power, would stop taking orders.
The Balochistan Front
Turning to the southwest, Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest province and its poorest, home to 15 million Baloch – an ethnic group distinct from Pakistan’s Punjabi majority, with their own language and a history of resistance to central rule stretching back to the country’s founding. They live on land rich in coal, gold, copper, and gas – revenue that flows to the federal government, not to them. China’s $62 billion investment in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor runs directly through the province, centered on the deep-water port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea. Armed resistance to Pakistani rule has flared in cycles since 1948. The current phase, accelerating since 2019, is the most organized and most lethal to date.
On Jan. 30, the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) launched coordinated attacks across more than a dozen districts. Militants hit schools, hospitals, banks, markets, military installations, police stations, and a high-security prison, freeing more than 30 inmates. The BLA says it killed 280 security personnel. Pakistan says it killed 216 militants and lost 22 soldiers and 36 civilians. The BLA views the Chinese projects running through its homeland as extraction without benefit – wealth siphoned off from Baloch land to enrich Islamabad and Beijing. It regularly targets Chinese workers and infrastructure as symbols of that arrangement.
The BLA has deployed female suicide bombers, hijacked passenger trains, stormed army and navy bases, and carried out attacks reaching Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi. Pakistan’s military response has been overwhelming force – airstrikes, mass arrests, enforced disappearances. After the January attacks, a military spokesman announced the army had “sent 216 terrorists to hell.”
Pakistan, meanwhile, claims that the BLA – and the Afghan Taliban – are operating as Indian proxies.
In 2025, the military renamed the organization “Fitna al-Hindustan” – literally, the chaos of India. Pakistan’s defense minister has accused India of “penetrating” the Taliban leadership. The arrest of Kulbhushan Jadhav, a former Indian naval officer detained in Balochistan in 2016, is a prime case cited as evidence of Indian intelligence operations in the province. In 2013, U.S. Special Representative James Dobbins acknowledged that Pakistan’s concerns about Indian involvement were “not groundless,” even as he called them “somewhat exaggerated.”
India flatly denies it all. The Baloch are caught in the middle regardless – between a Pakistani military that kills them and calls it counterterrorism, Indian intelligence that may be using them as pawns, and a Chinese mega-project that treats their land as a throughway. Nobody is fighting for the Baloch. Everyone is fighting over Balochistan.
The India Front
The third front is quieter but no less dangerous.
In May 2025, after militants killed 26 Hindu tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir – the disputed territory at the heart of the India-Pakistan conflict since 1948 – India launched missile strikes on Pakistan. Pakistan retaliated. After four days, a ceasefire brokered by Washington finally held.
Nothing was resolved. Kashmir remains the trigger while both sides are rearming. Pakistan signed a mutual defense pact with Saudi Arabia in September 2025. Aggression against one will now be considered aggression against both. India, meanwhile, has been building a relationship with the Taliban that would have been unthinkable a decade ago – opening an embassy in Kabul and hosting Afghanistan’s foreign minister in New Delhi.
The Taliban was once Pakistan’s strategic asset – created, funded, and armed by Islamabad to secure a friendly government in Kabul and block Indian influence in Afghanistan. Now Pakistan accuses the Taliban of being India’s proxy against Pakistan. The defense minister has said the people “pulling the strings” in Kabul are “controlled by Delhi.” The alliance that Pakistan built for three decades now takes meetings in New Delhi.
Washington on Every Side
The U.S. is not watching this war. It is on every side of it.
Washington backs Pakistan against the Taliban. The State Department explicitly endorsed Pakistan’s “right to defend itself.” Trump praised General Asim Munir – the architect of the Afghan campaign – as one of “two of the people that I really respect a lot.” Before launching the June 2025 strikes on Iran, Trump invited Munir to the White House and secured Pakistan’s cooperation before opening his own front in the Middle East.
Washington partners with India. The strategic relationship has deepened through two Trump administrations. India is the cornerstone of Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy against China. When India and Pakistan went to war in May 2025, Washington brokered the ceasefire, then walked away without resolving anything.
Washington designated the BLA, the Taliban, and the TTP as terrorists, giving Pakistan legal cover for military operations against all three while maintaining alliances with the governments accused of supporting them. The same State Department that endorsed Pakistan’s airstrikes on Afghan cities once stationed American troops in those same cities for twenty years.
Then, on Feb. 28, the U.S. and Israel struck Iran. The Pakistan-Afghanistan war was just one week old and disappeared from the front pages overnight. Trump called Pakistan’s strikes on Afghanistan “outstanding.” Then the Iran war started and he forgot about Pakistan and Afghanistan entirely.
The People in the Middle
In Girdi Kas, a family of 23 became a family of 5 in a single night. Pakistan says the strike hit a militant camp. Afghanistan says it hit a home. The United Nations confirmed civilians were killed.
In Balochistan, 15 million people live on land that everyone wants and nobody asks them about. In Kashmir, the same. And now, as Pakistan’s military announces body counts, and India is accused of funding chaos, China continues building ports there.
And the family in Girdi Kas is still dead.
Pakistan’s military says it has “sent 216 terrorists to hell.” Trump says Pakistan is “doing terrifically well.” And Balochistan – along with the other two fronts Pakistan is fighting on – remains the war nobody is watching.
Pieter Friedrich is an investigative journalist covering ethnonationalism, transnational repression, and South Asian geopolitics. His work has appeared in The Caravan, Middle East Eye, and the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and has been cited by Harper’s Magazine, the Washington Post, and The Intercept. More at pieterfriedrich.com.
