Intensifying Pakistan-Afghanistan Conflict Could Have Broad Implications for the Region

March 20, 2026 Analytical articles

Scott Briscoe

Security Management

A publication of SIS International

19 March 2026

The world is focused on the west side of Iran and the surrounding region, where the oil-rich Persian Gulf states are. On the east side of Iran, however, lie Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the escalating conflict between those two nations bears monitoring.

On 16 March, Pakistan bombed a building in the Afghanistan capital of Kabul not far from the Afghanistan’s largest airport, killing at least 143 people. The building lies within a facility that used to be a U.S. airbase before the United States pulled out of Afghanistan in 2021. The building housed a drug rehabilitation center, and reportedly it was treating at least 200 patients when it was hit.

The attack is the latest escalation in the conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan was once friendly with Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders—even helping them establish their rule in the country in the 1990s—but that has changed in recent years. Pakistan said Afghanistan supported a group known as the Pakistani Taliban, which has perpetuated a number of terrorist attacks on Pakistan over the last several years.

In October 2025, Pakistan strikes against what it said were terrorist operation centers in Afghanistan led to open skirmishing on the Pakistani-Afghan border.

Peace talks initiated by Qatar, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia did not have the desired effect. In late February 2026, Afghanistan bombed Pakistani military bases on the border, which precipitated Pakistani airstrikes on military targets in increasingly urban areas, and led Pakistan Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif to say on X that it was now “open war” between the two countries.

After the strike on the rehabilitation center, Pakistan publicly maintained it has only targeted military and terrorist targets. However, growing international outrage at the 16 March attack has led Pakistan to say it will pause airstrikes for the Eid al Fitr celebrations marking the end of Ramadan. Afghanistan said it, too, would honor that pause.

The geopolitical implications of the conflict are wide-reaching. Pakistan, which joined the number of nations with nuclear weapons in the 1990s, has close economic and defense ties with China and Russia. Afghanistan also has close economic ties to China, and Russia is one of the few countries that has recognized the Taliban as Afghanistan’s official government. However, an international affairs expert in Pakistan, Huma Baqai, told German news outlet DW that the attack on the former U.S. military base—which U.S. President Donald Trump said in 2021 had such strategic importance that it was a grave mistake to abandon it—had symbolic meaning. She said it showed “Pakistan definitely has Washington’s approval to continue its operations.”

In the same article, the DW quoted Afghanistan researcher Sardar Rahimi:

“The attack on Bagram Airfield is like a ‘yes’ to Trump,” Rahimi said, which sends the signal that Pakistan is ready to take on security responsibilities in Afghanistan that Washington has not pursued since its withdrawal. The whole thing is part of “a larger geopolitical puzzle” in which Pakistan is trying to position itself in the region in line with U.S. interests, he added.

The conflict also has implications in Pakistan’s continual conflict with India. Pakistan has said the Pakistani Taliban supports Indian terrorists in the Kashmir region. In that same X post where Pakistani Defense Minister Asif used the term “open war,” he said Afghanistan’s Taliban had become a proxy for India.

War between Afghanistan and Pakistan has much wider consequences

March 20, 2026 Analytical articles

Saad Mohseni

Financial Times

March 19, 2026

When these countries become arenas for militancy, the repercussions reverberate far beyond their borders

Pakistan’s recent bombing of a Kabul drug rehabilitation hospital killed hundreds — while the Taliban has responded with drones and cross-border raids. Two key issues are fuelling the animosity: the harbouring of militants and the tortured history of the Durand Line — a colonial-era border that divided ethnic communities.

Pakistan’s longstanding use of militant groups as tools of regional policy — from the Afghan mujahideen of the 1980s, to the Taliban during the war with the US — now seems to be coming back to haunt it. The Taliban’s presence in Pakistan’s tribal areas, and their shared ideology, has created deep links between the Taliban and the militants — known as the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) — who have been attacking Pakistan’s security services since 2007. A long-smouldering insurgency in Pakistan’s Balochistan region is adding to the tensions. At the core of the current impasse is the Taliban’s refusal to end the refuge these TTP fighters enjoy in Afghanistan. At the same time, the Taliban accuse Pakistan of backing anti-Taliban elements including the local Islamic State affiliate. Mutual suspicion has now hardened into open confrontation.

Yet Afghanistan and Pakistan ultimately need one another. Their economies remain deeply intertwined through trade corridors, transit routes, energy flows and cross-border labour. Neither can achieve stability in isolation. More than 23mn Afghans require humanitarian assistance, with roughly 17mn facing acute food insecurity. Vital trade with Pakistan has been cut since October 2025. Heavy reliance on Iran for transit and goods is an uncertain bet amid escalating regional war.

Pakistan, meanwhile, faces its own reckoning as it struggles with economic stagnation, inequality and political instability. This region has historically served as a sanctuary for militants and could do so again amid the war in Iran, as extremist figures displaced from hiding could once again look towards Afghanistan’s loosely governed frontier. An isolated and impoverished Afghanistan serves neither its own people nor the wider world.

Chronic instability and economic collapse create fertile ground for radicalism in a country where 63 per cent of the population is under the age of 25. This demographic reality could become either a dividend or a destabilising force. As a first step, both nations should build on the recently announced Eid ceasefire — brokered with support from Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia — and work to extend it into a more durable cessation of hostilities backed by credible mediation. The Taliban must move beyond entrenched positions towards a more inclusive governing model — one that abides by Afghanistan’s international obligations on human rights and girls’ education; the 2020 Doha Agreement, which the Taliban say they respect, provides a foundation for renewed engagement and a roadmap towards normalisation.

For its part, Pakistan must commit to peaceful settlement, choosing communication over force, and embrace a broad vision of economic co-operation between the two nations. The late Shah of Iran once championed regional economic co-operation among Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. That vision never fully materialised. After the guns fall silent in the region, it merits renewed consideration in a new form that includes Central Asia — backed by multilateral institutions that can underwrite infrastructure and private-sector growth. The past half-century offers a stark lesson. When these nations become arenas for proxy competition and ideological militancy, the consequences reverberate far beyond their borders. Lasting stability will rest on economic interdependence that makes conflict irrational and co-operation profitable.

Pakistan Pauses Afghanistan Airstrikes After Outrage Over Civilian Deaths

March 19, 2026 Current News Articles

By Elian Peltier Safiullah Padshah and Zia ur-Rehman

Elian Peltier reported from Herat, Afghanistan, Safiullah Padshah from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Zia ur-Rehman from Islamabad, Pakistan.

The New York Times

March 18, 2026

At least 143 people were killed in a Pakistani airstrike that hit a drug rehabilitation facility in Kabul on Monday, according to a top U.N. official.

Facing growing pressure from international agencies and foreign governments, Pakistan said on Wednesday that it would pause its campaign of airstrikes against its neighbor, Afghanistan, for five days of Eid al Fitr celebrations, which mark the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

The announcement came two days after a Pakistani airstrike hit a drug rehabilitation center in the Afghan capital, Kabul — the deadliest single strike in an escalating conflict that has already killed hundreds and displaced 40,000 people in Afghanistan and put Pakistan on edge.

At least 143 civilians were confirmed dead in the strike on the rehabilitation center, according to a United Nations official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a continuing U.N. investigation into the strike. The official said at least 119 others were injured, and that the death toll was likely to rise.

Pakistan, claiming to be targeting military sites, has carried out dozens of airstrikes on military infrastructure that have also hit or damaged health facilities and civilian homes. Afghanistan has responded with border raids and rudimentary drone attacks.

Shortly after Pakistan’s announcement that it was pausing its airstrikes, Afghanistan also announced a pause in its military operations, said Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban government in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has vowed to punish the Taliban government for harboring an Islamist terrorist group, known as the Pakistani Taliban, that has staged hundreds of attacks on its soil in recent years.

The Taliban government has denied hosting the group, despite repeated assessments from U.N. independent experts that it has enjoyed a safe haven in Afghanistan and financial support from the country’s leadership.

Until Wednesday, both Afghanistan and Pakistan had vowed further escalation in the conflict, ignoring calls by China, a close partner to both, to engage in talks. Pakistan’s information minister, Ataullah Tarar, said in a social media post on Wednesday that the pause in the military campaign came at the request of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.

A top Afghan government official called for talks to de-escalate the conflict.

“We do not have the spirit of revenge. Our doors for dialogue and negotiations are open,” said Afghanistan’s interior minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani, who for years oversaw the Taliban’s most lethal suicide squads. Mr. Haqqani spoke during the funeral for dozens of the victims killed in Monday’s strike on the drug rehabilitation center, named Omid, or “Hope,” in the Dari language.

The Omid facility sits in a former U.S. military base less than three miles from Kabul’s international airport and is run by the Afghan Interior Ministry, which also manages the country’s counternarcotics department.

Pakistan claimed responsibility for the strike but maintains that it had targeted a “military terrorist ammunition and equipment storage site.”

A senior Pakistani military official, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe the continuing military campaign, said Pakistan was aware that the Taliban government had hosted a drug rehabilitation center years ago. He said the military had intelligence that the broader compound housing the center was also used to train suicide bombers and store drones.

The official didn’t respond to a follow-up request for details on that intelligence, or about whether Pakistan was aware that the drug rehabilitation center was still operational at the time of the strike.

“Those who were killed were drug addicts, and they were all civilians and innocent people,” Mr. Haqqani said at the funeral. “They had no connection with any military group or government.”

Pakistan’s ultimate goal for its military campaign remains unclear.

“The minimum Pakistan will do is what we’re seeing now,” Qamar Cheema, a Pakistani security analyst, said about the airstrike campaign. “The maximum we could see is elimination of the top leadership.”

Privately, Afghan officials and top representatives of international institutions in Kabul say they believe that Pakistan might be seeking to topple the Taliban government. The United States has said that Pakistan has a right to defend itself — a stance that Pakistani officials have said that they interpret as a green light to conduct their operations.

Amid fear of retaliation for its air raids on Afghanistan, Pakistan has tightened security in its major cities. Officials have barricaded the capital, Islamabad, with dozens of checkpoints, reducing the number of entry points into the city from over 100 to 25.

A senior police official in Islamabad, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about security measures, said intelligence officials feared that the Pakistani Taliban and allied militant groups could attempt to strike Pakistan with encouragement from the Taliban government in Kabul. He cited recent statements by the groups threatening new attacks.

Although the Pakistani government and military have so far enjoyed wide public support for the campaign, some political figures have expressed growing concern over the humanitarian cost of the cross-border conflict.

Three Pashtun ethnic political parties issued a joint statement earlier this week urging both governments to de-escalate.

“Unless there is a clear change in Pakistan’s policy toward Afghanistan,” the statement read, “The continuation of this war will put civilian lives at even greater risk.”

Elian Peltier is The Times’s bureau chief for Pakistan and Afghanistan, based in Islamabad.

As Pakistan and Afghanistan declare truce, civilians in Kabul count the cost of war

March 19, 2026 Current News Articles

By Fazelminallah Qazizai

National Public Radio

March 19, 20268:11 AM ET

A crowd gathers outside Kabul’s Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital, where the United Nations says an airstrike killed more than 100 people on Monday.

KABUL, Afghanistan — On Monday night, residents living near the Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital in the Afghan capital heard a sharp sound tearing through the sky, followed by an explosion.

Two days later, Abdul Basir Watan joined dozens of inmates’ families crowding outside the hospital in central Kabul. They listened to doctors donning white medical gowns read out the names of survivors over a megaphone. A faint smell of burnt wood and plastic hung in the air. Through the bars of the iron gates, they saw a mound of concrete and metal where a building once stood.

Watan said his cousin Zamarek was seeking drug addiction treatment at this facility for the past four months. “He is not on the list of wounded. He is not on the list of dead,” said Watan. Someone had told him of bulldozers digging mass graves at a Kabul cemetery for those who couldn’t be identified. “I will go and pray there,” he says.

Taliban officials say a Pakistani airstrike hit the hospital, killing more than 400 people and injuring more than 250. According to estimates provided by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, at least 143 people died and 119 were wounded in the attack.

Pakistan says it had struck only a “military and terrorist infrastructure.”

But Georgette Gagnon, officer-in-charge of the U.N. mission, told NPR that the facility was “a well-known rehabilitation center” run by the Taliban’s interior ministry. “Our colleagues who visited the place found widespread destruction, including complete destruction of one block that housed adolescents receiving drug treatment.”

As Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid vowed retaliation following the strike, further escalations seemed imminent. But by Wednesday, both neighboring countries announced a five-day ceasefire for the celebration of the Muslim holiday of Eid.

The hospital attack was the deadliest in the three-week fighting between the two countries. Islamabad accuses the Taliban regime of giving safe haven to Islamist groups like the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the separatist Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) that carry out armed attacks in Pakistan. In retaliation, Pakistan has closed borders, halted trade and expelled millions of Afghans over the past year.

Tensions peaked last October as the two countries carried out cross-border strikes. At the time, Qatar and Turkey mediated a fragile ceasefire. But negotiations broke down shortly after.

“While Pakistan’s goals in degrading and punishing the Taliban government seem clear enough, it is unclear how they link to the TTP’s presence in Afghanistan,” says Ibrahim Bahiss, an Afghan expert with the International Crisis Group.

“Pakistan claims there’s a sprawling network of the TTP in Afghanistan. But we have not seen clear proof of any senior TTP bases or leaders being targeted. Oftentimes, the target is either the Afghan Taliban military installations or Afghan security military installations,” he says.

At the heart of the issue, says Bahiss, is Pakistan’s linking of many internal conflicts to powers beyond its borders.

“They’ve lumped everything together. The TTP is a Taliban proxy. The BLA is an Indian proxy. And then the Taliban are Indian proxies,” he says. “But when you’re looking at it from an analytical point of view, it is a slightly confusing picture.”

Meanwhile, families in Kabul continue to count this war’s cost.

At the Emergency Hospital in Kabul, dozens crowded around a thick book to check the names of the victims. Sahil, who goes only by one name, ran his finger down a page, searching for his brother Mohammad Yahya. Unable to find him, he walked along a cement path to the morgue.

Three bodies lay on metal beds. They were charred, covered in cotton sheets. Sahil couldn’t identify his brother in any of them.

By the time he left the morgue, the skies had darkened. He walked past women in veils, crying out the names of the ones they lost, and headed to another hospital. There were two left to search.

Afghan Officials Say Hundreds Dead in Pakistani Airstrike on Kabul

March 17, 2026 Current News Articles

By Safiullah Padshah and Elian Peltier

Safiullah Padshah reported from the site of the airstrike in Kabul, Afghanistan. Elian Peltier reported from Herat, Afghanistan.

The New York Times

March 17, 2026

The attack hit a drug rehabilitation facility, Afghanistan said, suggesting that its victims included civilians. Pakistan said it had targeted an ammunitions depot.

At least 400 people were killed and 250 others injured on Monday night after a Pakistani airstrike on a drug rehabilitation center in Kabul, Afghan officials said, in the deadliest attack of the three-month conflict between the two neighbors.

As emergency workers pulled bodies from smoking rubble in the Afghan capital, Pakistani military and government officials called statements from their Afghan counterparts “false claims.” They claimed responsibility for the strike, as part of six strikes carried out on Afghanistan, but said the target had been an ammunition depot.

A Taliban spokesman warned on Tuesday that Afghanistan would retaliate, further escalating the risk of all-out war between the countries, whose populations share deep cultural bonds and whose government officials regularly met until tensions sharply escalated in late February.

Pakistan accuses the Taliban government of harboring an Islamist terrorist group responsible for hundreds of attacks in Pakistan in recent years. Though Pakistan’s ultimate objective remains unclear, it has pummeled Afghan military infrastructure with strikes that have also hit or damaged civilian homes, refugee camps and more than 20 health facilities, according to the United Nations.

The compound hit by the Pakistani airstrike on Monday housed a drug rehabilitation facility run by the Taliban government and was widely recognized as such by local residents and nonprofits. A spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Health said 200 patients were staying in the building that had been struck and left in ruins.

A billboard atop an adjacent, charred building read “Support and Treatment Center, Omid” — or “hope” in the Dari language. On Tuesday, hundreds of people pressed against the compound’s entrance, many inquiring after relatives admitted to the center.

On Tuesday, Basmina Khudadadi stood in front of the compound’s entrance as she asked for news about her brother, whom she said had been admitted there about six weeks ago. She had brought him fresh clothes last month, she said.

“We have not informed his wife yet,” Ms. Khudadadi said.

Dejan Panic, the country director for Emergency, a nonprofit operating a hospital in Kabul, said 27 people had been admitted to the hospital, including one woman.

“Among the locations hit was an addiction treatment center,” Mr. Panic said. “We call for health care facilities to always be respected.”

A reporter who visited the site of the strike shortly after it was hit on Monday, and again on Tuesday, saw at least 80 bodies being pulled from the rubble or in body bags.

“The numbers are in the hundreds,” Jacopo Caridi, the head of the Afghanistan office for the Norwegian Refugee Council, a nonprofit, said about casualties after visiting the site. He said he had seen no military facilities in the immediate area.

In a statement on Tuesday, Pakistan’s minister of information, Attaullah Tarar, said: “All targeting has been done with precision only at those infrastructures which are being used by Afghan Taliban regime.”

Pakistani officials declared an “open war” against the Taliban government on Feb. 26, and have launched dozens of attacks on Afghanistan.

As of Sunday, at least 75 civilians had been killed and 115,000 others had been displaced, according to the U.N. mission in Afghanistan.

The United States has said that Pakistan has a right to defend itself — a stance that Pakistani officials have in private said they interpret as a green light to conduct their operations. Pakistan has ignored calls for dialogue made by China, its primary partner, despite public mediation efforts over the past week.

Some facilities built during the U.S. war in Afghanistan have been repurposed by the Taliban authorities, including former military bases now housing religious schools. The Omid drug rehabilitation center was set in a former U.S. military base, less than three miles away from Kabul’s international airport.

By Tuesday, dozens of bloodstained mattresses lay scattered among the debris as firefighters and emergency teams carried bodies into ambulances, under the close watch of hundreds of armed personnel.

The destroyed building, Afghan officials said, was a 180-foot-long structure that was used for meals and prayer. In smaller adjacent buildings, the debris contained white and blue patient gowns, identical sandals, and bottles of medicinal syrup.

Pictures taken throughout the night and shared by emergency workers with The New York Times showed no sign of weapons, ammunition or military equipment in the targeted building.

Other buildings adjacent to the large structure, each containing 20 to 30 bunk beds, also caught fire. White and blue gowns and identical sandals that looked like part of uniforms distributed to patients, as well as bottles of syrup and pills, could be found in the debris.

Afghanistan has long been the world’s leading source of illegally produced opium, but a ban by the Afghan authorities led to a sharp decline in opium production in 2023. Still, the use of cannabis, methamphetamine and other synthetic drugs remains a major public health concern and Afghan officials have interned thousands of people suffering from drug addiction in recent years.

Mr. Tarar, the Pakistani minister, said that there had been secondary detonations at the site, a sign that ammunition depots had been hit.

Across the compound, the smell of burned flesh, mixed with those of explosives and melted iron, filled the air.

As flames were still raging in the early hours of Tuesday, Muhammad Haidari, 23, stood dumbfounded near the facility, in search for answers about his two uncles that he said had been admitted at the center in February.

“I don’t know if they are alive or dead,” Mr. Haidari said. “Each one has children and family waiting for them to return home.”

Elian Peltier is The Times’s bureau chief for Pakistan and Afghanistan, based in Islamabad.

Afghanistan accuses Pakistan of targeting homes in airstrikes that kill at least 6 civilians

March 13, 2026 Current News Articles

By ABDUL QAHAR AFGHAN and MUNIR AHMED

Associated Press

March 13, 2026

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan’s Taliban government accused Pakistan’s military Friday of targeting homes in overnight airstrikes in Kabul and other areas of the country, saying at least six civilians were killed and more than a dozen injured, as fighting between the neighbors entered its third week.

Afghan government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on X that Pakistani aircraft also struck fuel depots belonging to the private airline Kam Air near the airport in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. “This company supplies fuel to civilian airlines as well as to United Nations aircraft,” he said.

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s state-run television reported that the country’s armed forces carried out “successful airstrikes inside Afghanistan” as part of the ongoing operation, targeting what it said were four alleged militant hideouts and their support infrastructure in Afghanistan.

The developments come amid a dramatic increase in tensions between the two countries which Pakistan has referred to as “open war. ” They are adding to concerns about the stability in the region as the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran continues with no end in sight, generating great uncertainty.

The dispute is rooted in Pakistan’s belief that Afghanistan’s Taliban government is harboring militant groups that stage attacks against it and also of allying with its archrival India. The Taliban deny harboring the militant groups.

Tensions erupted in late February

Pakistan and Afghanistan have been targeting each other’s military installations since late February, when Kabul said it struck Pakistani posts in response to Pakistani attacks along the border. Pakistan’s military has said its operations targeted the Pakistani Taliban and their support networks along the border.

Both sides have claimed to inflict heavy losses in what has become their deadliest fighting in years.

In Kabul, the Defense Ministry said Afghanistan’s air force responded to the Pakistan attacks by targeting Pakistani military installations in the Kohat district, causing heavy losses.

Pakistan’s Ministry of Information rejected the Afghan Defense Ministry’s claims as baseless. In a statement, it said the Pakistani Taliban attempted to deploy three rudimentary drones in Kohat, but Pakistani forces shot them down. Two civilians were injured by falling debris, it said.

In his posts on X, The Afghan government spokesman, Mujahid, alleged that Pakistani strikes hit multiple civilian sites and uninhabited locations in Afghanistan’s Paktia and Paktika provinces, as well as other areas. He said the attacks “will not go unanswered.”

Kabul police spokesman Khalid Zadran said at least four civilians, including children, were killed in the city and 15 others were injured.

Additionally, Afghanistan’s Department of Information and Culture in Nangarhar province said a Pakistani mortar shell killed a woman and a child there.

The total number of casualties around Afghanistan was unclear.

Diplomatic efforts have failed to stop the attacks

The latest Pakistani strikes came a day after China’s special envoy, Yue Xiaoyong, arrived in Islamabad and met with his Pakistani counterpart, Mohammad Sadiq, following a visit to Kabul.

Sadiq, Pakistan’s special envoy for Afghanistan, said he and Yue “discussed threats posed by terrorist groups” and agreed on the need for collective efforts to ensure lasting peace and stability.

Repeated calls from the international community for restraint have had little effect. Pakistan has previously said its strikes along the border and inside Afghanistan are aimed solely at Khawarij, a phrase Islamabad uses for the outlawed Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP.

On Friday, a roadside bomb targeting a police vehicle killed six officers in Lakki Marwat, a district in northwest Pakistan, police official Sajjad Khan said. No one claimed responsibility but suspicion is likely to fall on TTP which often claim such attacks.

Since the Afghan Taliban returned to power in 2021, the TTP has intensified attacks inside Pakistan and along the border. Islamabad says its military operations will continue until Kabul takes verifiable steps to curb the TTP and other militants operating from its territory.

A Qatari-mediated ceasefire ended the intense fighting in October, but several rounds of peace talks in Turkey in November failed to produce a lasting agreement.

Ahmed reported from Islamabad. Associated Press writers Riaz Khan and Rasool Dawar in Peshawar, Pakistan, contributed to this story.

Afghanistan-Pakistan: Civilians paying highest price for escalating conflict

March 13, 2026 Analytical articles

Norwegian Refugee Council

Published March 13, 2026

Escalating conflict along the Afghanistan–Pakistan border is having a devastating impact on civilians in eastern Afghanistan, displacing 115,000 people since 26 February. Civilians must be protected and humanitarian organisations must be granted safe access to reach families in need, said the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).

In the first eight days of the conflict 56 civilians were killed and a further 129 injured.

“Afghanistan is facing crisis on top of crisis, and it is civilians who are paying the highest price,” said Jacopo Caridi, NRC’s country director for Afghanistan. “All parties to the conflict must abide by international humanitarian law and ensure civilians, and civilian infrastructure, are protected.”

“Families who were already on the brink of survival have been forced from their homes. Thousands have found refuge in makeshift camps and with local families. Others are being forced to rent sub-standard accommodation they can little afford. They have lost access to clean water, health services, and schooling. We urgently need funding to be able to scale up our support to these families.”

826 homes have been damaged or destroyed in the conflict. NRC teams speaking with displaced communities in Kunar and Nangarhar provinces reported particular concern for child- and women-headed households and the elderly, many of whom said they had received no assistance.

More than 25,000 people who were displaced by the earthquake in Kunar province six months ago are subject to evacuation orders. They have been forced to return to their areas of origin, where little to no services are available, risking their health and wellbeing. Another 14,500 people are at risk of being displaced for a second time.

Afghanistan has been hit hard by aid funding cuts and currently is one of the lowest funded humanitarian responses globally. Now conflict is preventing people from accessing even the limited support available. NRC has been forced to suspend education classes in Khost province due to the conflict meaning 626 children have lost access to education.

Health services at more than 20 facilities have been suspended due to insecurity, including five which have been damaged in airstrikes and shelling. World Food Programme (WFP) were also forced to temporarily suspend food distributions.

NRC is scaling up its support to affected families as quickly as possible, including providing cash to more than 4,300 people to allow them to buy what they need the most. Another 4,000 displaced people will be given cash in the coming days.

“We left everything behind,” said Bakhtiar, a father of six, who fled from Torkham, near the border with Pakistan. “Our belongings, our clothes, everything. We don’t even know what has happened to our house.” 

NRC supported the family with cash which Bakhtiar says will help for some time. “But if this conflict continues, it will not be enough. We have lost everything. We ask the international community not to forget us. We are living in very difficult conditions and have nothing left,” Bakhtiar adds.

Afghans in Iran are also being affected by instability in the region. Iran hosts more than 4.4 million Afghans, up to 1.4 million of whom are undocumented and at risk of forced return.

Some families are returning to Afghanistan due to safety concerns, with a reported 1,700 people currently returning daily. One Afghan man who returned told NRC teams: “If the war had not started, I would not have returned. Survival became impossible.” 

“With a world in turmoil, Afghans must not be forgotten,” said Caridi. “Rising food prices and closed borders are making survival even harder for families whose lives have already been shattered by conflict.”

From the evening of 26 February to 3 March, airstrikes and border clashes between Afghanistan and Pakistan affected ten provinces in Afghanistan: Kabul, Kandahar, Khost, Kunar, Laghman, Nangarhar, Nuristan, Parwan, Paktia and Paktika. A total of 115,000 people have been displaced as of 5 March (OCHA).

Between 26 February to 5 March 2026, 56 civilians were killed and a further 129 injured in Afghanistan by indirect fire and aerial attacks (UNAMA).

Health services at more than 20 facilities have been suspended due to the insecurity, including five which have been damaged in airstrikes and shelling (Health cluster).

826 homes have been damaged or destroyed in the conflict including 103 have been completely destroyed (CRNA).
Some 3,640 families (25,480 people) displaced following the 31 August 2025 eastern region earthquake and living in informal settlements in Kunar Province have been evacuated or received evacuation orders due to their proximity to a military compound and forced to return to their areas of origin. A further 2,074 families (14,520 people) earthquake IDPs living in Kunar and Nangarhar face the prospect of secondary displacement (OCHA).

NRC provided 4,300 displaced people in Nangarhar province with cash support and will continue to support families in need with cash in the coming weeks. We are working to further scale up our support to families affected.

21 NRC education classes in border districts of Khost Province were suspended on 1 March due to the conflict. As a result, 626 children have lost access to education.

Already this year, around 110,000 Afghans have returned from Iran, with roughly 1,700 each day since the onset of the conflict in the Middle East. Over 5 million Afghans returned from neighbouring countries over the past two years – including almost 1.9 million from Iran in 2025 alone (UNHCR).

NRC’s February press release on six months after the Kunar earthquake outlines the harsh conditions displaced people in the area are facing and compounding factor of lack of funding.

In 2026, 21.9 million people across Afghanistan require humanitarian assistance, with 17.4 million people food insecure (OCHA).

A total of 1.71 billion US dollars is required to meet the needs of 17.5 million people targeted for assistance. As of mid-March, just 178.5 million, or 10.4 per cent, has been delivered (OCHA).

Iran is currently home to more than 4.4 million Afghans, 1.4 million of whom are undocumented (UNHCR).

‘A few beatings won’t kill you’: judge rejects divorce request of woman abused by husband in Afghanistan

March 13, 2026 Current News Articles

Zahra Joya, Tom Levitt and Ziba Balkhi from Rukhshana Media

The shocking level of physical violence against women permitted under the Taliban’s new laws has been revealed this week by the case of a woman in northern Afghanistan, who said she was beaten with a cable wire by her husband and told by a judge: “You want a divorce just because of that? … A little anger and a few beatings won’t kill you.”

Farzana* said her husband was quick-tempered and often resorted to beating her. He regularly humiliated her and called her “disabled”, she said, because her right leg was slightly shorter than the left. She had tolerated the abuse for the sake of their children, but one evening, she said, his violence went too far.

“One day I was very sick and had no energy to cook dinner. When he came home from work, he said: ‘Now you don’t even do the housework?’ I told him I was sick, but he beat me with a mobile phone charger cable. The marks on my back and arms remained for several days, but I didn’t think of taking photos that might one day help me in court.”

After the attack, she decided to seek an end to the violence by filing for divorce, but when her case reached a Taliban court recently, Farzana said the judge not only rejected her application but belittled her claims of abuse.

“When I said he beats me and constantly humiliates and insults me, and that I want a divorce, the judge asked: ‘You want a divorce just because of that? Don’t you have another reason?’” When Farzana went on to describe the attack she had recently suffered, she said the judge asked whether she had proof of the abuse.

“When I said no, he told me: ‘You were young and enjoyed your husband. Now that he is getting older you are making excuses to divorce him so you can marry someone else. Go back, you have a nice husband, live with him. A little anger and a few beatings won’t kill you. Islam allows a man to beat his wife if she disobeys him, to discipline her. Go, and don’t come again asking for divorce over such things.’”

Shaharzad Akbar, the head of the human rights organisation Rawadari, said such cases were now commonplace in Afghanistan. Women either had to live with domestic violence or seek justice from the Taliban courts, she said, “where they are often lectured and sent back to the same abusive houses or worse, punished for ‘disobeying’ husbands”.

Women’s rights activists, UN experts and lawyers have long argued that the conditions being imposed on Afghan women, including banning them from schools, most jobs and speaking in public, amounts to gender apartheid.

But a new criminal code given to courts last year – and publicised in January – has gone further by permitting violence against women and preventing them from seeking justice. According to the code, men are allowed to beat their wives as long as they do not use “obscene force”, defined as causing fractures, wounds or visible bruises, which the wife must prove in court. For this crime a man may be sentenced to only 15 days of imprisonment. Akbar said the code gave husbands a “licence for domestic violence and punishments, short of breaking bones”.

Speaking about the code to the UN this week, Malala Yousafzai, a Nobel laureate, said: “This is not culture. It is not religion. It is a system of segregation and domination. We must call the regime in Afghanistan by its true name: gender apartheid.”

After the court verdict, Farzana said she was forced to return to her husband, who had now become more violent than before. “He tells me: ‘Either endure it or die.’ He doesn’t even allow me to go to my father’s house.” The judge also told Farzana she could not object to her husband taking a second wife.

UN Women special representative in Afghanistan, Susan Ferguson, said: “If we allow Afghan women and girls to be silenced – and punished purely because they are women – we send a message that the rights of women and girls everywhere are disposable, and that is an immensely dangerous precedent.”

* Name has been changed

Afghanistan accuses Pakistan of air attacks on homes in Kabul, Kandahar

March 13, 2026 Current News Articles

By Al Jazeera Staff, AFP and AP

Afghanistan’s Taliban government has accused Pakistan of targeting civilian homes in overnight air attacks, killing four people in the capital and two in the east, as fighting between the two neighbours entered its third week, overshadowed by the United States-Israel war on Iran igniting the Middle East.

Women and children were among those killed in the attacks, according to the Taliban.

Government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on X Friday that Pakistan’s aircraft also struck fuel depots belonging to the private airline Kam Air near Kandahar airport.

Pakistani security sources said they carried out “successful airstrikes” against “four terrorist hideouts” in Kabul and frontier provinces, and destroyed an oil storage facility at Kandahar airport.

Abdul Wahid, a 29-year-old daily labourer, told the AFP news agency that he and four family members were wounded when his house was hit at about 12:10am local time (19:10 GMT on Thursday).

“Suddenly, a noise came from another house. I don’t know what happened afterwards. All these bricks fell on me. Women and children were under the rubble as well,” he said.

“I was there for 10 minutes as if it was my last breath. Then my neighbours came and removed the bricks … and took us to the clinic.”

Calls for restraint from the international community have gone unheeded by both sides.

On Thursday, the Taliban government said four members of the same family, including two children, were killed by Pakistani artillery and mortar fire in eastern Afghanistan.

The deaths reported on Thursday brought the toll to seven people killed in Afghanistan since Tuesday in cross-border clashes, according to authorities in Kabul. That could rise with the latest attacks on Friday.

Fighting between the two countries intensified on February 26 when Afghanistan launched an offensive along their shared border in retaliation for earlier Pakistani air attacks on the Pakistan Taliban, just two days before the US and Israel attacked Iran, starting a sprawling regional war.

Pakistan maintains that it does not target civilians, and casualty claims from both sides are difficult to verify independently.

Islamabad accuses Kabul of harbouring fighters from the Pakistan Taliban, which has claimed responsibility for a series of deadly attacks inside Pakistan, and from the ISIS (ISIL) affiliate in Khorasan province. Afghan authorities deny the charge.

The United Nations mission in Afghanistan has said 56 civilians have been killed there, including 24 children, by Pakistani military operations from February 26 to March 5.

Pakistani officials have confirmed about 12 soldiers were killed and 27 wounded in the latest bout of fighting, while the Taliban claims to have killed more than 150.

About 115,000 people have been forced to leave their homes, according to the UN.

Pakistan bombs airline fuel depot near Afghanistan’s Kandahar airport: Taliban

March 13, 2026 Current News Articles

Reuters

13 March 2026

Afghanistan’s defence ministry said it carried out drone strikes in response to a Pakistani military base in the northern city of Kohat, causing heavy damage.

Pakistan bombed the fuel depot of private airline Kam Air near Afghanistan’s Kandahar airport, the Taliban said on Friday, a significant escalation in the worst conflict in years between the neighbours despite China’s efforts to mediate.

Following Beijing’s stepped-up mediation efforts, no Pakistani air strikes were reported by either side in over a week until the bombing in Kandahar. Ground clashes along the 2,600 km (1,600-mile) border had also tapered off, although there had been intermittent bouts of fighting.

“The company (Kam Air) supplies fuel to civilian airlines as well as to United Nations aircraft,” Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said.

Pakistan also carried out bombings in other areas, including the capital Kabul, with women and children among those killed as civilian homes were targeted in some locations, he said, adding that the aggression would “not go unanswered”.

Pakistani security sources said the military had carried out overnight strikes on four militant hideouts in Kabul, Kandahar and Paktia province, including one targeting an oil storage facility at the Kandahar airfield.

Afghanistan’s defence ministry said it carried out drone strikes in response on a Pakistani military base in the northern city of Kohat, causing heavy damage.

Pakistan’s military and information ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

The fighting erupted last month with Pakistani air strikes inside Afghanistan that Islamabad said targeted militant strongholds. Afghanistan called the strikes a violation of sovereignty as it launched retaliatory attacks.

Militancy has been a bone of contention between allies-turned-foes Pakistan and Afghanistan, with Islamabad saying Kabul provides a safe haven to militants executing attacks on Pakistan.

The Taliban, however, denies the allegation and says militancy is Pakistan’s internal problem.

Reuters had reported on Thursday that mediation efforts by China, which had been urging an end to the violence, had helped ease the fighting.

Pakistan’s foreign ministry spokesperson Tahir Andrabi had also said that Islamabad and Beijing were engaged in a “dialogue process” on Afghanistan.

By Fazelminallah Qazizai

Diplomatic efforts have failed to stop the attacks

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