Pakistan has been at war with Afghanistan’s Taliban regime for just under one month. Yet the conflict, which was officially declared by Pakistan the day before the US and Israel launched their strikes on Iran, has been overshadowed by events in the Gulf.
Pakistan and the Taliban have made widely differing claims regarding the numbers of people killed on either side. The rising casualty toll only briefly captured global attention when a Pakistani airstrike hit a drug rehabilitation centre in Kabul on March 16, killing more than 100 people.
But the three weeks of fighting, with a brief pause for the Eid al-Fitr holiday between March 20 and 23, confirm for anyone who still doubted it, that the schism between Pakistan and the Taliban is real. Of course there are complex geopolitical and regional interests at play. India provides some support for the Taliban while China tries to balance its alliance with Pakistan and its more tentative relationship with the Taliban. But the conflict tells us more about the politics of the Taliban movement itself and its relationship with Pakistan.
