Since 10 October 2025, the Pakistani army has intermittently been bombing Afghan cities. Kabul, Kandahar and Jalalabad were targeted, and the bombings continue. The aim is to put pressure on the Afghan regime to ban the activities of the Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP)[1] in Pakistan. While these bombings have so far failed to reduce TTP activity, entire neighbourhoods of Afghan cities have been seriously damaged and hundreds of people have been killed or seriously injured. Eight months ago, Pakistan also decided to cut off cross-border trade in order to force the Afghan regime to take action against the TTP. For the Afghan economy, the impact is considerable, as it seriously compromises trade, economic stability and the daily lives of the population: supply restrictions have caused the prices of basic necessities such as flour, cooking oil, rice, and fuel to soar; thousands of workers, truck drivers and day labourers in the Afghan provinces bordering Pakistan have lost their means of subsistence; youth unemployment is exploding. The Afghan economy risks collapsing.
Imperialist each-against-all inevitably leads to military confrontation
How can we explain this confrontation between the two countries when the Taliban movement was welcomed, financed and armed by the Pakistani state? Between 2001 and 2021, Taliban leaders were trained, protected and indoctrinated within Pakistan's borders, often within madrassa networks steeped in radical Islamist ideology. These institutions functioned not only as religious schools, but also as strategic centers, producing fighters and commanders who would shape the Taliban insurgency. In short, by largely supporting the Taliban's fight, Islamabad was effectively behind the current regime in Afghanistan. In doing so, the Pakistani army and secret services hoped to obtain what security experts call “strategic depth” [2] which would strengthen their strategic influence in Afghanistan and allow better control of minorities on their own territory by securing its western border. But that was without taking into account the imperialist ambitions of his former protégé. The new regime in Kabul refuses to subordinate its own interests to Pakistani demands and gives carte blanche, even grants its support, to the Pakistani Taliban terrorist movement TTP, which has now changed its strategy and is carrying out terrorist attacks from Afghan territory, among other places in the Pakistani Pashtun province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
According to Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Asif, these bombings are necessary because the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is said to have “brought terrorists from all over the world to Afghanistan and exported terrorism”. The accusation against Afghanistan of exporting terrorism is particularly hypocritical on the part of Pakistan. Pakistan has always harboured terrorist organisations. Militant groups are an integral part of its security system. Thus, it even used the Taliban as a backup force to “pacify” the region of Balochistan when it was in revolt. During the war in Afghanistan, Pakistan intensified its policy of using radicalised proxies to carry out acts of terror and achieve its foreign policy objectives. Additionally, many terrorist attacks across the world are attributed to Pakistan. Groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), which target Indian-administered Kashmir, have operated from Pakistani territory for decades with an appreciable degree of tolerance from local authorities.
As for the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, although it does not have the same means as the great powers or even the regional medium powers, it nevertheless shares the same imperialist ambitions. It's a bit like the world of gangsters: while the godfather rules the whole city, the local pimp controls a street. Kabul, which does not have the capacity to launch a large-scale military attack against Pakistan, resorts to a method that it knows well and with which it has experience: terrorism, and for this, it uses the TTP. The TTP claims, based on their ethnic composition, that in Pakistan, the traditionally Pashtun autonomous province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) and the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) belong to the Taliban, and it is waging a campaign of guerrilla warfare and bloody attacks there.
The conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan is an expression par excellence of the intensification in all regions of the world of “each against all” which increasingly dominates current imperialist relations. Regional powers, as well as the terrorist organisations they use, constantly manoeuvre to weaken their rivals, exploit instability and obtain advantages that are as temporary as they are illusory, freeing themselves from any stable alliance structure. At the same time, the massive destruction and ruins that are accumulating, without any of the belligerents gaining the slightest lasting advantage, underline the total irrationality of these conflicts. The Pakistani-Afghan conflict concretely illustrates the broader trends of the decomposition of capitalism: the multiplication of local conflicts, incessant military confrontations, the growing irrationality of political orientations and decisions, etc.
Imperialist tensions across South Asia.
But the conflict does not only concern tensions between Pakistani and Afghan imperialism. The fact that India has strongly condemned Pakistani airstrikes on Afghan territory highlights this. In fact, since November 2024, India, Pakistan's main imperialist adversary, with which it was in open war until May 2025, has forged political ties with the Taliban regime. Faced with increasingly strong imperialist pressure from its historic competitor in the region (China), also faced with the erratic policy of the Trump administration which constantly threatens drastic increases in customs duties and which is moving politically closer to Pakistan, Modi's government has strongly strengthened diplomatic, security and economic ties between Kabul and New Delhi. Thus, India has reopened its embassy in Kabul, supports the Taliban in areas linked to the fight against narcotics and internal instability, and projects are being studied to offer investment facilities to Indian companies in Afghanistan. This rapprochement is obviously perceived by Pakistan as a direct threat and also explains the increasingly aggressive position towards what it perceives as an Afghanistan-India axis. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has openly accused the Afghan Taliban regime of facilitating Indian objectives.
Furthermore, the destabilisation of the autonomous province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa also seriously worries China to the extent that the “Silk Road” to the Pakistani port of Gwadar also crosses this province and, moreover, the Pakistani regime, a long-time ally of Beijing, seems to be looking more and more towards the United States. While the Chinese regime, which has significant economic interests in both countries, is increasing efforts to end the violent clashes between the two nations, Pakistan is determined to continue its policies until Kabul puts an end to the TTP attacks. This intransigent attitude is supported by the United States.
Since 2022, Pakistan has had a new government which seeks to limit its dependence on China. Favouring ties with the United States, it joined Donald Trump's Board of Peace and strives to curry favour with the American president in his deals.[3] The United States today views Pakistan as an ally in the fight against the threat of terrorism that Afghanistan, in particular, poses to South Asia. The first result of cooperation between the two countries was the designation by the United States of the Balochistan Liberation Army as a foreign terrorist organisation and the subsequent arrest and detention of the mastermind of the suicide bombing at Kabul International Airport on 26 August 2021, which killed 182 people. Finally, authorisation was granted by the United States to Pakistan to use Afghan airspace to carry out bombings on strategic TTP sites along the border, but also in certain towns.
Thus, in addition to the scheming of local imperialist powers, the intrigues of major imperialist powers come into play, and all of these manoeuvres make the formation of alliances in South Asia particularly uncertain and volatile. The rise of an imperialist each-against-all mentality, here as elsewhere, underlines the system’s descent into chaos and barbarism.
Capitalism is war! Workers have no homeland!
In addition to the imbroglio of the imperialist ambitions of the different actors, small, medium and large imperialisms, this war illustrates a more general characteristic of the current period of putrefaction of capitalist society: conflicts which persist and get bogged down without finding a solution, burying entire regions in the quagmire. Thus, the United States' decision to give Pakistan carte blanche to bomb TTP positions only increases chaos and the risk of larger regional conflagration. The Pakistani-Afghan conflict demonstrates how imperialist confrontations increasingly escape the control of the great imperialist powers, whether directly or indirectly involved. As a result, uncontrolled and increasingly barbaric militarism is spreading around the world: increasing military operations, increased border bombings, proliferation of armed militias, terrorist attacks and nationalist propaganda are intensifying, even as these policies only increase instability. The growing recourse to militarism, despite its manifest inability to resolve the underlying political questions and contradictions, reveals the deeply irrational character of the decadent capitalist system.
Like all wars, this one is criminal! First, the Pakistani bombings and the TTP terrorist attacks left hundreds dead and injured. Moreover, these regimes are spending billions of dollars to fight this war while large parts of their populations are plunged into extreme poverty: in Pakistan, 11 million people suffer from severe food insecurity and malnutrition, while 1.7 million are on the brink of famine; In Afghanistan, 17.4 million people suffer from acute food insecurity, while 4.7 million are at risk of famine.
This war in no way corresponds to the interests of the working class in any region. If it cannot be indifferent in the face of bullets and bombs, and feels solidarity with all these victims, the working class does not have to take sides in all these conflicts, but must clearly denounce all the imperialist camps involved. It must express its solidarity in its fight against the exploiting class of capitalists and, in the development of its struggle throughout the world against all nationalist mystifications, by defending proletarian internationalism.
F. June 1, 2026.