Islamabad: In the weeks before the Pakistani military carried out air raids inside Afghanistan over the weekend, violence had been unbearable.
A suicide bomber detonated explosives during Friday prayers at mosque in the capital, Islamabad, killing at least 36 worshippers and wounding 170 others.
Similarly, an explosives-laden vehicle rammed a security post in Bajaur in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, killing 11 soldiers and a child. The attacker, according to Pakistani authorities, was later identified as an Afghan national.
After the Bajaur attack, Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a demarche to the Taliban authorities on February 19, summoning the Afghan deputy head of mission in Islamabad.
But two days later, in the early hours of Saturday, another suicide bomber struck a security convoy in Bannu, also in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, killing two soldiers, including a lieutenant colonel.
Islamabad had repeatedly urged Kabul to take verifiable steps to prevent armed groups from using Afghan soil, but that no substantive action had followed.
Pakistan’s patience appeared to have run out, and early on Sunday, the military struck back, targeting what it described as “camps and hideouts” in Afghan border areas.
According to Pakistani authorities, air raids in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar and Paktika provinces targeted sanctuaries of Pakistan Taliban, or TTP, and its affiliates, killing at least “80 militants in intelligence-based air strikes along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border targeting seven camps”.
But to one’s utter astonishment, India entered the picture, condemning the Pakistani military action and throwing in its support for Afghanistan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
