The fighting in Kamdesh district, close to Pakistan, belongs within this rupture. Afghan authorities initially reported 28 fighters killed and later raised their account to 41 killed and 62 captured during three days of operations. They alleged that the force included Islamic State militants and former members of Afghanistan’s security forces. The figures and the composition of the group remain unverified. What matters politically is Kabul’s contention that the men did not merely cross an inadequately policed frontier: they were prepared and dispatched through an organised network operating inside Pakistan.
Material provided to Parrhesia News describes recruitment, movement through Pakistan, weapons training and subsequent transport towards Afghanistan. There is a consequential limit to that evidence. The detainees are in Taliban custody, and some of the recorded testimony reviewed does not identify Pakistani intelligence as the organisation responsible; that attribution appears in the Afghan authorities’ written accounts. The material therefore raises questions about infrastructure and sponsorship without establishing a Pakistani state operation. That distinction is essential, particularly when the alleged sponsor and the government holding the prisoners are already engaged in a bitter confrontation.
Yet uncertainty about this operation does not make the strategic question disappear. If Kabul’s account is substantiated, it would suggest that Pakistan is seeking leverage against the Taliban through armed opponents while demanding that the Taliban suppress armed opponents of Pakistan. The underlying calculation would be familiar: instability can be cultivated across the border to extract concessions from a government that direct pressure has failed to discipline. The difficulty, as Pakistan has repeatedly discovered, is that the instruments of such pressure acquire ambitions of their own.
Islamabad’s central demand concerns Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, the TTP, which it accuses Kabul of allowing to operate from Afghan territory and launch attacks inside Pakistan. Kabul denies providing a safe haven. The Afghan and Pakistani Taliban are distinct organisations, but expecting their ideological affinities and militant relationships to disappear on Islamabad’s instructions was always an ambitious reading of Pakistan’s influence. Supporting the Afghan Taliban’s return did not purchase the power to determine whom they would confront once in office.
Nor can Pakistan’s internal insurgency be explained entirely by pointing west. The TTP’s conflict is with the Pakistani state, and its ability to survive also demands scrutiny of conditions inside Pakistan: security failures, local militant networks and the political relationship between the authorities and the communities in which the conflict unfolds. Afghan sanctuary, where established, matters. It does not transform a Pakistani movement into an Afghan invention or relieve Pakistan’s military establishment of responsibility for its own choices. Moving the explanation across the border is considerably easier than repairing what sustains the violence at home.
This is where the allegations from Nuristan become particularly awkward. Pakistan presents military action inside Afghanistan as a necessary response to threats emanating from its neighbour. Kabul now presents the fighting in Kamdesh as evidence that the neighbour itself is manufacturing threats. Neither accusation validates the other, but together they reveal how far the relationship has travelled from the expectations of 2021. The promised strategic advantage has become a contest over who exports insecurity and who is entitled to retaliate.
The September 24 Pakistani strikes illustrate the danger. Islamabad said it hit ten locations used to launch and store drones targeting Pakistan. Kabul denied responsibility for the alleged drone attacks and said four civilians had been killed. Each government supplies a security justification that the other rejects; each incident creates political pressure for another response. Air power can destroy a location. It cannot compel the Taliban to accept Pakistan’s account of the conflict, still less make them accept a subordinate place in the relationship.
For Kabul, the Nuristan allegations also serve a clear political purpose. They challenge Pakistan’s claim to be the injured party and allow the Taliban to present themselves as defenders of Afghan territory against outside intervention. That claim does not require admiration for the regime making it. A government can be repressive at home and still resist foreign interference; its opponents can be victims of its repression without every armed operation against it becoming an independent struggle for liberation. The relevant question is who organises the violence, supplies it and expects to benefit from it.
The alleged presence of both former security personnel and Islamic State militants makes that question more urgent, while proving no alliance between them. Displaced men, defeated forces and militant organisations can become available to different recruiters for very different reasons. Their backgrounds do not establish a common command. If elements of such a mixed force were deliberately assembled to pressure Kabul, however, the risks would extend beyond the immediate operation. Using enemies of the Taliban would not ensure that their subsequent objectives remained compatible with those of their sponsors. Pakistan should have ample experience of the difference.
Nuristan therefore requires investigation rather than a convenient verdict. The alleged training locations, transport arrangements and recruitment networks offer more useful lines of inquiry than another exchange of categorical accusations. Pakistan’s denial deserves scrutiny; Kabul’s evidence does too. Establishing an intelligence role would materially change the assessment of the operation. Failing to establish one would leave the organisation of the cross-border force unresolved, rather than automatically vindicating either government’s broader narrative.
The deeper failure is already visible. Pakistan’s military establishment treated influence in Afghanistan as a means of securing Pakistan, but influence was never the same as obedience. Having welcomed the Taliban’s victory, Islamabad now faces the costs of their independence. If the answer is to revive pressure through armed intermediaries, it would reproduce the method that helped create the predicament. Strategic depth was supposed to give Pakistan room to manoeuvre. It has left the two countries fighting over whose militants are whose responsibility.
