One of the worst Pakistan-Afghanistan border clashes in recent years has turned an old strategic fiction into hard reality: the Taliban are no longer Islamabad’s “strategic depth.” They have become a neighboring power asserting their own red lines.

In overnight clashes on October 11-12, Kabul claimed to have killed 58 Pakistani soldiers and seized multiple posts; Pakistan acknowledged 23 troop deaths and said it had killed more than 200 Taliban and affiliated fighters. Major crossings at Torkham and Chaman were shut as the shooting ebbed on Sunday morning.

The proximate trigger was a reported Pakistani airstrike in Kabul days earlier, aimed, according to a Pakistani security official, at Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) emir Noor Wali Mehsud. Islamabad has not publicly confirmed details; the Taliban accused Pakistan of violating Afghan sovereignty and vowed retaliation.

The sequence matters: it shows Pakistan is willing to strike across the line when it believes TTP leadership is sheltered in Afghanistan – and that the Taliban will answer militarily rather than absorb punishment.

Behind the exchange is a stark metric: Pakistan’s militant-linked violence has surged. The Centre for Research and Security Studies (CRSS) recorded 2,414 fatalities in the first three quarters of 2025, nearly the full-year toll of 2024 (2,546).

Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) reports at least 600 TTP attacks or clashes with security forces over the past year. These trends validate Islamabad’s insistence that TTP sanctuaries across the border are intolerable and they raise the political cost of restraint.

This is the paradox of Pakistan’s post-2001 “Afghanistan policy.” For two decades, the army sought leverage in Kabul to blunt Indian influence and keep the frontier quiet.

The Taliban takeover in 2021 produced neither. Kabul’s rulers prize nationalist legitimacy over dependency. They reject the British-era Durand Line as an imposed frontier and bristle at any Pakistani attempt to police it unilaterally. The result is a fluid, often violent boundary where each side treats cross-border strikes as provocations to be answered in kind.

Saturday night’s battles were spread from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to Balochistan: Angoor Adda, Bajaur, Kurram, Dir, Chitral and Bahram Chah, illustrating the scale of the friction points along a 2,640-km mountain border.

Pakistan’s military said it had captured or neutralized multiple Taliban positions. The Taliban said they ended “successful” operations at midnight but warned of further reprisals if their territory was struck again. Border closures are Islamabad’s first lever; they also impose immediate costs on Afghan trade and transit.

Regional optics added fuel. Even as the clashes unfolded, Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi was in New Delhi on a rare public visit, part of Kabul’s quiet outreach to regional capitals.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar called for restraint. None of this directly alters battlefield arithmetic, but it undercuts the premise that Pakistan alone can manage or mediate Taliban behavior.

What has changed since 2021 is not just Taliban posture – it is Pakistan’s calculus. After a brief, ill-fated truce with the TTP in 2022, the group known as the Pakistani Taliban has escalated attacks on police, army and paramilitaries across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and beyond.

Analysts warn that cross-border raids may provoke further TTP reprisals, drawing Islamabad into a cycle of punitive strikes and border firefights without solving the sanctuary problem. In strategic terms, the “depth” Pakistan once sought now looks like a security sinkhole, absorbing resources while exporting risk.

None of this suggests Pakistan is about to attempt a ground incursion. The more likely playbook is a mix of tactics already visible this week: targeted air or artillery strikes on specific nodes; temporary seizure of Taliban posts to signal escalation dominance; and economic pressure via crossing closures.

Islamabad will simultaneously seek third-party assurances from Doha, Riyadh and Beijing that Kabul will constrain TTP activity – even if the Taliban will not publicly admit to hosting them.

For the Taliban, the incentive to hit back is domestic. A regime facing economic contraction, sanctions and an Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISIS-K) insurgency cannot afford to look vulnerable to Pakistani airpower.

Calibrated reprisals along the frontier allow Kabul to project sovereignty and rally nationalist sentiment without embracing a prolonged conventional fight it cannot win. But that balancing act is risky: prolonged skirmishing threatens border trade, taxes and the limited foreign investment Afghanistan still attracts.

Where does this leave South Asia’s security geometry? India will test a narrow, transactional engagement with Kabul while avoiding formal recognition. Gulf states will keep urging de-escalation to avoid shocks to refugee flows and energy corridors.

China’s priority will be preventing instability from spilling into Balochistan and endangering China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) segments already vulnerable to insurgent attacks. The net effect is a multipolar management of a border crisis that used to be a bilateral file on Rawalpindi’s desk.

Policy choices for Pakistan are unenviable. A purely kinetic approach risks stoking TTP violence at home; a purely diplomatic one has failed to deter cross-border facilitation. A realistic strategy pairs targeted pressure with bounded transactional deals: time-limited understandings on specific TTP leaders; verification via third parties; and incentives tied to trade flows and humanitarian access through Torkham and Chaman.

Above all, Pakistan must harden its side of the frontier: intelligence, policing and protection of local officials – because the Taliban’s Afghanistan is not returning to proxy status.

The Durand Line has always been more political than cartographic. The weekend’s firefights showed that the map alone cannot produce order. For Islamabad, “strategic depth” has given way to strategic exposure: a contested boundary, a resurgent insurgency, and a neighbor that will trade fire to defend its pride.

The alternative to a long, grinding crisis is not a grand bargain but small, verifiable steps that reduce space for TTP while keeping the border from becoming a permanent war zone. That is not a satisfying endgame, but for now, it is the only one available.

Naina Sharma is a research associate at the Center of Policy Research and Governance (CPRG), New Delhi.