Arshad Shehzad
The ceasefire between Pakistan and Afghanistan has been extended until the conclusion of the Doha negotiations. The next round is scheduled for 25 October in Istanbul. However, despite this temporary lull, the regional situation remains explosive. Five days of intense clashes along the Durand Line, Pakistani airstrikes on Kabul, and conflicting claims from both sides all confirm that the policy pursued for two decades in the name of the “War on Terror” has been an unmitigated failure.
Casualty figures remain sharply contested. The Pakistani military reported 23 of its personnel killed while claiming to have killed over 200 Afghan soldiers. Afghan government spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid countered with the reverse claim: 58 Pakistani soldiers killed versus nine of their own fighters lost. Yet beyond these statistics lies the more crucial reality: ordinary people and the working class on both sides are the true victims of these skirmishes.
In recent months, Pakistan has launched multiple attacks into Afghanistan. These strikes resulted in the deaths of 46 people in the Barmal area of Paktika in December 2024 and several civilians in Khost and Nangarhar in August 2025. While Pakistan did not formally accept responsibility, it described them as operations targeting Taliban hideouts.
Internal conflicts and the ruin of the tribal population
This conflict is more than just a border dispute; it is the logical outcome of decades of state policies. The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) insurgency is a direct consequence of Pakistan’s reactionary yet contradictory Afghan strategy: supporting the Mujahideen at the behest of the United States against the Soviet Union, later backing the Afghan Taliban’s takeover of Kabul, and simultaneously supporting the US in the “War on Terror.” The cost of this policy has been borne by the Pashtun working class and the Afghan people. Military operations in the Pashtun region, forced displacement, and the suppression of demands for local autonomy have all inadvertently fuelled the Taliban’s influence.
The state’s so-called “counter-terrorism” approach is, in reality, an effort to impose military control over the tribal areas. This is precisely where groups such as the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM – Pashtun Protection Movement) and the Pakhtunkhwa Olasi Tehreek (POT – Pashtun People’s Movement) have been demanding an end to the war, military withdrawal, and local ownership of resources. These operations have resulted in the internal displacement of millions of Pashtuns and the deaths of thousands. Paradoxically, after every so-called “peace operation”, the Taliban’s strength has increased rather than diminished. Today, daily attacks continue to target the Pashtun population of the tribal region in the name of combating the Taliban.
Minerals, capital, and war
The multi-billion-dollar mineral reserves—particularly lithium and other rare minerals—in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the merged tribal districts are of immense interest to global capitalism. This context shapes state policy. The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Mines and Minerals Act 2025 and proposals to re-separate the tribal districts are essentially blueprints to pave the way for corporate interests.
Under the guise of “development”, the state is dissolving community ownership to open the door for global capital. The resources belonging to the Pashtun people are being transferred to the global market under the misleading banner of “national interest”. The commotion created by the TTP and the border clashes is essentially a tactic to suppress public resistance against this blatant plunder.
The collapse of strategic depth
Pakistan’s current military policy is a continuation of the outdated concept of “strategic depth”, first envisioned by the establishment in the 1980s. During the US–Soviet conflict, Islamabad aimed to turn Afghanistan into a “semi-colony” to gain a defensive advantage against India through a puppet government. This was the policy that instrumentalised the Mujahideen, organised the Taliban, and later manufactured the ideological distinction between “good” and “bad” Taliban.
Pakistan’s pivotal role in the Doha negotiations facilitated the Taliban’s return to power. However, this same policy has now become a noose around the state’s neck. The TTP insurgency, border skirmishes, regional isolation, and internal political turmoil are all symptoms of the failure of “strategic depth.” Pakistan’s plan to make Afghanistan a “second front”—an attempt to secure its position in the imperialist market—has utterly failed.
The Pakistani government’s demand that the Afghan authorities control the TTP is a fundamental miscalculation. The Pakistani state was confident that the Afghan Taliban, once in power in Kabul, would manage the TTP. But the Afghan Taliban realise that any aggressive action against the TTP could push its fighters towards ISIS and potentially cause a schism within their own ranks, as the Taliban is not a unified, monolithic force. Crucially, regional commanders share a decades-long fighting kinship with the TTP, and many TTP fighters based in Afghanistan now have family ties with the Afghan Taliban.
Class exploitation of Afghan refugees
The Pakistani government cites security concerns to justify the expulsion of Afghans, though the underlying reasons are political. This policy has already led to the eviction of millions of Afghans. These refugees, many of whom have resided in Pakistan for decades, are now targets of state retaliation. As working-class Afghans, they have served as cheap labour in Pakistan’s construction, industrial and agricultural sectors for four decades. Their third or fourth generation now sees Afghanistan as an alien country. They have established livelihoods, homes and relationships in Pakistan through decades of hard work. Forcibly deporting them to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan means destroying their lives and communities that have flourished alongside the local population.
The lives and futures of vulnerable groups—especially women, girls, ethnic and sexual minorities, Hazaras, journalists and individuals associated with the former government or international organisations—are at grave risk in Afghanistan. Their arrests, forced deportations, and confiscation of property are not only inhumane; they represent an extreme form of class oppression.
The Pakistani capitalist class has long benefited from the labour of these refugees and is now deflecting attention from its own systemic failures by portraying them as a “security threat.”
Imperialist relations and the current situation
Military clashes with India in May and the subsequent improvement in relations with the Trump administration have provided a glimmer of false hope to Pakistan’s ruling class. The US President’s pressure to hand over Bagram Air Base and the threat of attack on Afghanistan reveal the clash of interests among global powers.
The Pakistani state is an active participant in this imperialist rivalry, aligning at times with China and at other times with the US. But the ultimate goal remains constant: the protection of capitalist profit, which invariably results in oppression for the working class and marginalised nations.
Revolutionary Socialist Position
The Revolutionary Socialists unequivocally condemn Pakistan’s aggression against Afghanistan. The Pakistani working class must reject this war and unite against its own ruling class to stop the reactionary conflict, demand the withdrawal of Pakistani troops from the borders, and end the military operations in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It is the task of the working class and progressive forces to combat the reactionary Islamist movements—not the Pakistani state, whose own reactionary politics in fact fuel their growth.
This conflict is fundamentally a war of capitalist exploitation and imperialist interests, aimed at seizing the region’s resources and crushing popular resistance. While we oppose the reactionary, Islamist, misogynistic and capitalist government of the Afghan Taliban, we are against any imperialist or Pakistani state intervention to overthrow it. We believe Afghanistan has the right to self-defence against foreign intervention. The freedom and progress of the Afghan people can only be achieved through revolutionary mass movements, workers’ organisations, and people’s committees.
A unified struggle of the working class across Afghanistan, Pashtunkhwa, and the whole of Pakistan is the only force capable of defeating not only the Taliban and Pakistani state oppression but also ending imperialist hegemony in the region. The urgent need is for the working people of the region—Pakistani, Afghan, and Pashtun—to forge a common revolutionary front to challenge all three forces: imperialism, the Taliban, and state oppression—linking today’s struggles with the wider fight to overthrow the system that perpetuates war, terrorism, and destruction.