Pakistan Just Launched ALL-OUT WAR Against the Afghan TALIBAN
After years of rising tensions, Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban are now locked in what officials call an “open war.” Border clashes, airstrikes, and escalating retaliation threaten to destabilize South Asia and beyond. How did this conflict begin, why is it happening now, and could it trigger a wider global crisis? In this video, we break down the origins, key players, and what comes next in a conflict that may reshape regional security forever. Stay until the end to understand what happens next.
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After years of rising tensions, Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban are now locked in what officials call an “open war.” Border clashes, airstrikes, and escalating retaliation threaten to destabilize South Asia and beyond. How did this conflict begin, why is it happening now, and could it trigger a wider global crisis? In this video, we break down the origins, key players, and what comes next in a conflict that may reshape regional security forever. Stay until the end to understand what happens next.
#militarystrategy #militarydevelopments #militaryanalysis#military #modernwarfare #militaryanalysis
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00:00After tensions boiled for years, Pakistan has finally done the unthinkable.
00:04It has launched an all-out war against the Afghan Taliban,
00:09sparking a conflict that feels like it's edging us closer to World War III.
00:12As bombs drop in Ukraine, Russia, Iran, and in the US military bases throughout the Middle East,
00:18another region is on the brink of chaos, as an open war develops between two terrifying powers.
00:24In what is the latest and perhaps most dangerous flare-up of tensions between
00:28Pakistan and the Taliban-run Afghanistan, a series of border conflicts has devolved into
00:33what Pakistan's defense minister, Kauai Muhammad Asif, now calls open war,
00:38which he claims that Pakistan is willing to wage against the Taliban because it has run out of
00:43patience. How on earth did we get here? Why is this war happening now? And what does it mean for
00:49Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the region at large? We'll be exploring the many answers to the
00:54latitude questions as the video progresses, so be sure to stick with us. But as far as how we got
00:59here, it all started on February 26th, when the Taliban's military arm launched a series of attacks
01:04on Pakistani positions across the Durand Line, which is essentially the border that separates
01:09Pakistan from Afghanistan. Winding about 1,600 miles through mountains and deserts, that disputed border
01:16has been the flashpoint for confrontations between Pakistan and the Taliban in the past,
01:20as you'll discover soon, and it's served that purpose once again. According to the BBC,
01:25the Taliban offensive was launched at around 8 p.m. local time and ran across the border provinces
01:31near Kunar, Khost, Nangarhar, Nuristan, Paktia, and Paktika, several of which are homes to Pakistani
01:37military bases. The Taliban claims that it launched its raids on these bases in response to Pakistan's
01:42February 22nd strikes against what Pakistan claimed were militant camps in Afghan territory,
01:47which CNN called at the time a serious test of an uneasy peace between the neighbors.
01:52February 26th saw that test end in failure. Afghanistan's Taliban attacked back.
01:58The Taliban border strikes led to an almost instant response from Pakistan,
02:03claiming that the Taliban had miscalculated and opened unprovoked fire on multiple locations
02:07across the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Pakistan launched a series of bombing raids against
02:13what it claims to be Taliban positions in Afghanistan during the early hours of February 27th,
02:18which included several attacks against border provinces and strikes against targets in Kabul.
02:23CNN adds that Pakistan was also believed to have specifically targeted Kabul because it's the
02:27birthplace of Hibatullah Akhanzada, who is the secretive leader of the Taliban.
02:32Whether the strikes were designed to take Akhanzada out, or if they were simply meant to be symbolic,
02:37isn't yet known. Though Pakistan's labeling its response to the Taliban's border attacks as
02:41Operation Righteous Fury suggests the former.
02:45If Pakistan did indeed intend to kill the Taliban's leader, there is no confirmation that it was
02:49successful. The Taliban certainly wouldn't confirm its leader's death, even if it had happened.
02:54In the wake of Pakistan's response, the Taliban's spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid,
02:59took to X to create a post that has since been deleted. In that post, he claimed that the
03:03Taliban had responded to these Pakistani attacks with strikes against military positions in Helmand
03:08and Kandahar. Though how true this claim may be is up for debate, especially as the post claiming
03:13the strikes was deleted soon after it was posted. Pakistan has also claimed that Taliban drones have
03:18targeted three locations since the fighting began. Two of those are military targets, including a
03:23military academy in Abbottabad and an artillery school in Noshera. However, one of the Taliban's
03:28drones reportedly felled near a primary school in Swabi. If that drone was intended to strike the school,
03:34it would mean that the Taliban is targeting civilians. And the use of drones by the Taliban
03:38for military purposes is also unprecedented, as the organization was previously thought to only
03:43have access to civilian drones. Right now, the countries are engaged in tit-for-tat exchanges.
03:49Deaths are starting to mount up, though how extensive the casualties truly are is difficult
03:53to determine. CNN reports that the Taliban was claiming that Pakistan's strikes had killed 19
03:58civilians and injured a further 26 as of February 27th. Supposedly, most of those casualties were
04:04women and children, though this claim may be a ploy by the Taliban to score some propaganda points.
04:09Each side has delivered its own figures of how many fighters have died. According to the Taliban,
04:1455 Pakistani soldiers have died in the Taliban strikes, which have led the Taliban to claim that
04:19it has taken 19 posts from Pakistan. These gains were made with the comparatively modest losses of
04:24eight Taliban fighters to death, along with 11 wounded. However, Pakistan's Prime Minister's
04:30spokesperson, Musharraf Zaidi, paints a much different picture. He claims that 297 of the
04:35Taliban's fighters have been killed, along with over 450 injured as of February 27th.
04:40The truth is difficult to determine when both sides are making such wildly different claims.
04:45Adding to the confusion, most media outlets are adding a disclaimer to their reports,
04:49noting that they haven't been able to independently verify any of the figures
04:53that either Pakistan or the Taliban are sharing. What is abundantly clear so far
04:57is that it has been a bloody confrontation. Depending on who you believe, it was sparked
05:02either by a Pakistani attack on Taliban bases in Afghanistan, or by a series of Taliban strikes
05:07along the border it shares with Pakistan. Either way, there has been around a week of fighting that
05:12shows no signs of coming to an end anytime soon. As CNN points out, Pakistan and Afghanistan
05:18have been here before. Since October, the two countries and their leaderships have maintained
05:22a very shaky ceasefire, which was signed in the wake of another deadly conflict.
05:27However, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, or CSIS,
05:31says that this October conflict primarily focused on the border regions.
05:34The strikes we've seen toward the end of February, particularly those conducted by Pakistan,
05:39seem to be venturing beyond those regions. In other words, what was once a border dispute,
05:43albeit a bloody one, has descended into the open war that Pakistan claims it to be.
05:48The obvious question has to be asked, why? We've already covered one of the reasons,
05:53which seems to be the spark that set the whole thing off. The Taliban in Afghanistan
05:57believes that Pakistan violated the ceasefire agreement between the two nations
06:01when it launched its strikes against the supposedly militant bases on Afghanistan's territory.
06:06Pakistan would claim differently, arguing that these bases were occupied by terrorists
06:10who have been operating in Pakistan. And that brings us to the reason behind the trigger point,
06:14or at least one of them. Pakistan accuses Afghanistan of harboring terrorists that have
06:19been wreaking havoc in Pakistan for years. According to Pakistan's leadership, the Taliban
06:24government in Afghanistan has been supporting anti-Pakistani terrorists, who Pakistan claims
06:29are carrying out a widespread campaign of suicide attacks across the country. The Taliban claims that
06:34this is nonsense and that the territory of Afghanistan isn't being used to present any sort of threat
06:39to another nation, which in turn leads to the Taliban's claims that Pakistan's military is doing
06:43little more than carrying out unprovoked attacks against Afghanistan's civilians. Again, it's
06:49tit for tat. Each claim by Pakistan is countered by a claim from the Taliban and neither side is backing
06:54down. One thing is for certain, Pakistan has a point about terrorism in its territory, though it isn't
07:00clear how much of that terrorism is being perpetrated by the Taliban directly versus people who are
07:05operating individually or as part of sects that support the Taliban but have no direct involvement with it.
07:10We have seen a consistent increase in terrorist activity in Pakistan over the last few years.
07:16According to the US Department of State, the number of terrorist attacks in Pakistan,
07:19along with the number of casualties caused by those attacks, rose by 50% compared to the figures from
07:252022. The perpetrators of these attacks were varied, including local ISIS branches, the Balochistan
07:31Liberation Army, and the Tariq-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. Keep that last group in mind,
07:36we'll be coming back to the TTP later. By 2025, the South Asia Terrorism Portal, or SAT-P,
07:43along with the Institute for Conflict Management, ranked Pakistan second in its Global Terrorism
07:48Index. The number of deaths caused by terrorist attacks in the country had risen to 1,081 over the
07:54year, leading up to SAT-P's 2025 index, which it says was an increase of 45% over the previous
07:59year.
08:00The TTP was responsible for about half of these attacks, resulting in 558 deaths in 2024 alone.
08:07To Pakistan, these substantial increases in terrorist activity on its own soil can all
08:12be linked back to Afghanistan and its Taliban regime. Again, the Taliban denies this, but
08:16according to the CSIS, Afghanistan under the Taliban's rule has a track record of providing
08:21a safe haven to terrorists from groups like the TTP and Al-Qaeda. Furthermore, the sharp increase in
08:27violence within Pakistan coincides with the Taliban rising to power in Afghanistan back in 2021,
08:33when US forces departed from the country. So, Pakistan may have a point on the terrorism front.
08:38However, it has more reasons for declaring open war on Afghanistan, one of which seems utterly insane.
08:45But before we get to those reasons, along with what's going to happen next,
08:48this is a reminder that you are watching the military show. We bring you the full picture,
08:52not just the headlines, so subscribe to the channel to stay ahead of the curve.
08:55Now, before we get to the craziest reason behind Pakistan declaring open war on the Taliban,
09:00let's come back to the Durand Line. We told you earlier that most of the fighting between
09:05Pakistan and the Taliban has taken place across this massive border, and there is a good reason for it.
09:09Both the Taliban and successive Afghan governments before it have refused to recognize the validity
09:14of the Durand Line for years because of how it was formed. According to the CSIS, the line was
09:20created back in 1893 as an attempt by the UK to shield the British Raj from the Russian Empire.
09:26When the UK created this line, it didn't consider how it would affect the Patshun communities that
09:31live in and around the new border that it had created. That's important because the Taliban today
09:35is dominated by the Patshun movement, which is likely what draws the group to dispute and fight
09:40across the Durand Line. Pakistan has had chances to smooth over this dispute, according to the Royal
09:46United Services Institute or RUSI. The fact that it hasn't could even be considered a diplomatic mistake,
09:51especially as the Durand Line was created by a country that is no longer operating in Pakistan
09:55and hasn't been for close to a century. Consistent refusals to do anything about the conflict
10:01engulfing this border had led to Pakistan creating what RUSI calls a Frankensteinian monster out of the
10:06Taliban. In other words, a group that Pakistan once supported is now responsible for many of the
10:11issues that have led to open war because Pakistan hasn't done enough to deal with the Durand Line
10:15issue. Again, Pakistan would surely argue this. It would claim that a border that has been in place
10:21for well over a century should simply be respected at this point, even if it breaks up a community that
10:25forms the backbone of the Taliban. As is so often the case, regional disputes are escalating into something
10:31far worse. And with that we come back to what is perhaps the most insane reason for Pakistan's
10:36decision to declare open war, along with its constant fighting against the Taliban beforehand,
10:41India. Specifically, and as CSIS points out, Pakistan accuses the Taliban of being little more
10:47than a proxy for India. The basis for this claim seems to lie in the fact that India has provided
10:51humanitarian aid to Afghanistan while it was under Taliban rule, along with sending diplomatic contact
10:57into the country. Pakistan's claim ignores the fact that India has historically aligned itself with
11:02groups that battle the Taliban, such as the Northern Alliance and the US. Still, some in Pakistan now
11:08claim that Afghanistan has become a colony of India. These include Kawaiya Asif, the Pakistani defense
11:14minister we mentioned earlier, who took to X in the wake of the Taliban's bombings of Pakistan,
11:18to claim that it was expected that peace would reign in Afghanistan once the Taliban took over
11:23and the US withdrew from the country. However, the Taliban turned Afghanistan into a colony of India.
11:28Pakistan made every effort, both directly and through friendly countries, to keep the situation
11:32stable. It carried out extensive diplomacy. However, the Taliban became a proxy of India,
11:38Asif declared. This is all very debatable, especially as India worked to maintain basic
11:42diplomatic ties with Afghanistan for far longer than the Taliban has been in power in the country.
11:47Some might argue that Pakistan is now using its war against the Taliban to score points against one
11:52its major regional and geopolitical rivals. Still, with the reasons for the open war between Pakistan
11:57and the Afghan Taliban covered, we move on to what happens next, and it's here where things get a
12:02little difficult. Pakistan said on February 28th that it would hold no dialogue with Afghanistan's
12:08Taliban regime in the wake of what has happened over the last couple of weeks, which suggests that
12:13the skirmishes and strikes that we're seeing right now are the first stages of a much larger war.
12:17If that war happens, Pakistan, at least on paper, is the much stronger force. That's according to both
12:23CNN and Global Firepower, which ranks military nations each year based on dozens of factors.
12:28According to Global Firepower, Pakistan has the advantage in almost every department.
12:32It has 660,000 active personnel in its military, compared to the 75,000 believed because different
12:39sources stated plus 170,000 active personnel to be available to the Afghan Taliban. Pakistan also has
12:45550,000 reserves compared to the zero that the Taliban has, along with 500,000 paramilitary forces versus
12:5290,000 in Afghanistan. Pakistan has a defense budget of more than $9 billion. Afghanistan only spends $145
13:00million on its military per year. The Afghan Taliban also has practically no air force or land power,
13:06outside of about 4,000 armored vehicles, compared to the 59,000 plus that Pakistan has, along with its
13:122,677 tanks and thousands of units of artillery. As a landlocked nation, Afghanistan also has no navy,
13:19so it's possible that Pakistan could use its fleet of 120 assets to launch attacks on the Taliban.
13:24CNN adds that what the Taliban has in terms of military assets amounts to little more than some
13:29Soviet-era helicopters and whatever the US abandoned when it withdrew from the country.
13:33Oh, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. 170 of them, according to the International Campaign to Abolish
13:39Nuclear Weapons. Granted, Pakistan is unlikely to use these types of weapons against the Taliban,
13:44but the fact that it has them, on top of everything else available to the Pakistani military,
13:48suggests that any war should be a whitewash for Pakistan. But it won't be. At least Pakistan's
13:53victory wouldn't come easily if a ceasefire isn't declared. One of the reasons for this is the TTP,
13:59which you may recall we asked you to keep in mind earlier. That group, which operates inside
14:03Pakistan, is one of the terrorist organizations that Pakistan accuses the Afghan Taliban of sheltering.
14:08It's a claim that makes sense. The second T in TTP stands for Taliban, after all. And even though
14:13the Taliban has mediated between Pakistan and the TTP in the past, CSIS says that the Taliban tends to
14:19come out in favor of the TTP more often than not. Pakistan's TTP problem is that this is just the
14:25sort of group that feeds into the one tactic that the Taliban has that could mitigate all of
14:29Pakistan's massive military advantages, guerrilla warfare. There's a good reason why the US withdrew
14:34from Afghanistan, clearing the way for a Taliban takeover in the process. The Taliban is very good
14:39at conducting damaging warfare against enemies with limited resources. And in the TTP, the Taliban
14:44has a group that has professed allegiance, as CSIS notes, and is believed to have between 30 and 35,000
14:49members per the United Nations. That's not enough members to engage in an all-out conventional war with
14:54Pakistan, of course, but there are certainly enough people for a guerrilla war inside Pakistan that
14:59sees terrorist activity escalate. Suicide bombings, ambushes, and the general wreaking of havoc against
15:04Pakistan's military bases could all be conducted by the TTP on the Afghan Taliban's behalf, weakening
15:10Pakistan from the inside as the war rages. The BBC adds that any war that occurs between Pakistan
15:16and the Afghan Taliban will be far from conventional. Even as Pakistan has started to target Afghan government
15:22facilities with its strikes, the BBC notes that the extensive guerrilla warfare experience that
15:26people whom the Taliban has placed into its government could pay off in a full-scale war.
15:31The Taliban wouldn't be trying to win in the conventional sense of destroying Pakistan's army.
15:35It would do what it did against the US. Even if Pakistan occupies Afghanistan,
15:39there would be no end to the conflict. The Taliban would splinter into hundreds of pockets all across
15:44the country, and with the help of the TTP, inside Pakistan itself. Any victory that Pakistan
15:50achieves would come at a massive ongoing cost that it would be paying for years.
15:54Pakistan also has its economy to worry about, as highlighted by the Eurasia Group's South
15:59Asia analyst Pramit Pal Chowdhury, who says,
16:01Pakistan cannot afford to go to war with the Taliban. Their economy is in tatters.
16:06Fighting a similarly conventional force might be possible for Pakistan due to the size and strength
16:10of its military, but fighting against one that Chowdhury labels essentially a coalition of militia,
16:15as expensive and a long-term process that Pakistan is unlikely to be able to sustain.
16:21In short, neither side is in a position to roundly defeat the other, and that situation
16:25works for the Taliban far more than it does for Pakistan. Perhaps that's why other South Asian
16:30regional leaders are already calling for an end to hostilities. Iran was offering to mediate
16:35between the two sides when the latest hostilities broke out. However, how available that option might
16:40be now is up in the air that the US and Israel have launched their own campaign against Iran's regime,
16:44regime, which has left the country's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, dead.
16:48The United Nations, China and the UK have all called for de-escalation, as has Mujahid,
16:54the Taliban spokesperson, who said on February 27th that,
16:58Now too we want the issue to be resolved through dialogue, but Pakistan has said no to dialogue,
17:03at least so far. And that leaves the situation in Southeast Asia on a knife edge. If Pakistan is
17:08serious about its cup of patience having run out, what we're seeing now may be little more than the calm
17:14before a massive storm that could engulf the entire South Asian continent in war. And if that happens,
17:20World War 3 may not be too far behind, as far too many countries have interests in that portion of
17:25the world. After all, conflict between India and Pakistan, which may yet happen based on Pakistan's
17:30claims of the Afghan Taliban being a proxy for India, is one of five possible flashpoints for the
17:35eruption of World War 3 in 2026. You can find out all about that along with the other four flashpoints
17:40in
17:41our video. And if you got value out of this video, be sure to subscribe to The Military Show for
17:45more
17:46analysis on the latest developments in global warfare. And thank you as always for watching.
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