The air attacks by the Pakistan Air Force on four locations in Afghanistan’s Paktika province led to the killing of 46 people, mostly women and children. The use of the Air Force across the border is always a dangerous escalation by any nation and it could lead to increased hostilities in an already complex security scenario. Both countries accuse each other of supporting terrorists and separatists. While these groups battle it out on both sides of the Pak-Afghanistan border, there have also been confrontations between the two nations’ forces. Afghanistan has vowed to avenge this latest attack, and everyone knows how that would come about. Suicide bombers will already be gearing up.
The situation has been made worse by the fact that the PAF’s targets were supposed to be TTP insurgent groups, but it ended up a botched operation that killed mostly civilians. It serves as a reminder why utilising the Air Force is not always the first call, as without proper intelligence inputs it is more likely to fail and end up worsening relations between nations. Even the highly effective Israeli Air Force gets it wrong sometimes.
However, it could be a calculated risk taken by the Pakistani establishment to send across the message that it is willing to escalate despite the consequences. Much like India’s attack on Balakot in 2019. The resulting bravado by Pakistan was deflated when it became clear that things could get worse. Pakistan got the message that the dispensation in India was prepared to go all the way. This led to a significant decrease in anti-India activity on the border and elsewhere.
Is the Pakistan government stable enough to continue down this path with Afghanistan? It does have considerable conventional superiority over its opponent, but the Taliban do not operate at that level, about which the Russians and the US will bear witness. Baluchistan is barely under Pakistan control, with insurgency at its peak. Any further security challenges will further destabilise the political scenario in the entire country.
Considering that all this is going on in its neighbourhood is an added headache for India, which is already concerned about the situation in Bangladesh. The cause for the instability is common in all these nations – various models of Islamic fundamentalism, which like a cancer threatens to destroy any semblance of civilisation that remains. Nobody seems to have an effective antidote, as yet.
