Pakistan bombs Kabul and Kandahar

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Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid gestures during a news conference, following an escalation in cross-border tensions with Pakistan, in Kandahar, Afghanistan, on Friday. japantimes.co.jp

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A wounded Afghan woman receives treatment at a hospital in Jalalabad after a Pakistani mortar shell hit a camp for people returning from Pakistan near the Torkham border crossing in Nangarhar Province on Feb. 27, 2026. Aimal Zahir—AFP/Getty Images time.com

Mourners offer funeral prayers for police officers who were killed in militant attacks in Bannu, Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, on Feb. 26, 2026. Karim Ullah—AFP/Getty Images time.com

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Pakistan carried out air strikes on Kabul and Kandahar on Friday, a step the Taliban described as pushing the two neighbours into “open war,” according to Reuters reporting carried by The Japan Times. Witnesses in Kabul reported loud blasts, jets overhead, and ambulance sirens, while the Taliban said there were civilian casualties without giving figures.

The strikes mark a shift from Pakistan’s earlier pattern of hitting targets near the border to directly targeting Afghanistan’s governing centres. That choice narrows the Taliban’s room to treat attacks as deniable border incidents and forces an overt response. It also raises the odds of retaliation that is symbolic rather than strategically useful: rockets, mortars, or cross-border raids that demonstrate resolve but do little to dismantle militant networks.

Time magazine’s explainer frames the latest escalation as the latest turn in a worsening cycle of attacks and reprisals along a frontier that has never functioned like a settled border. Pakistan says militants operating from Afghan territory—particularly the Pakistani Taliban, or TTP—are driving violence in its northwest. The Taliban government, meanwhile, has incentives to deny that it is hosting an insurgency against a neighbour: admitting it would advertise weakness and invite demands it cannot reliably meet.

The resulting logic is transactional. Pakistan’s leadership is under pressure to show it can reduce attacks at home; when policing and intelligence fail, the cheapest visible substitute is air power over the border. Afghanistan’s rulers, short on cash and capacity, cannot easily dismantle armed groups embedded in the borderlands, but they can signal sovereignty by absorbing blows and promising a response. Each side tries to shift the costs of its internal security problem onto the other, while civilians in places like Nangarhar and around the Torkham crossing absorb the immediate damage.

Diplomacy, in this setting, becomes less a route to settlement than a way to manage blame. The Taliban’s statement that it is “open to talks,” reported by Reuters, arrives only after strikes on major cities—when the priority is to show the population that the leadership is not passive. Pakistan’s public justification, meanwhile, is aimed as much at domestic audiences as at Kabul: it is a message that the state is acting, even if the underlying drivers of militancy remain.

The practical question is whether either government can credibly enforce any deal. Militants benefit from the same terrain and administrative gaps that limit both states’ reach. If Pakistan’s strikes expand the conflict while leaving the TTP’s operating environment intact, the next escalation will be measured not in statements but in the number of funerals and the length of border closures.

On Friday, black smoke rose over Kabul and Kandahar after Pakistan’s first reported strikes on Afghanistan’s main cities. The Taliban said civilians were among the victims but did not provide a count.