Tariq Ahmed never lets his pistol out of his sight these days. Sitting cross-legged on a woven charpai, his face concealed with a scarf, the 26-year-old looks nervously left and right, shifting his gun in and out of his waistband.
It was here, just a few months ago in this neighbourhood bordering Pakistan’s north-western border city of Peshawar that his uncle Shehan Shah, 36, was shot dead at point-blank range by the Taliban.
Like Ahmed, his uncle was also in the police, a higher-ranking constable dedicated to his job, which supported his family of seven children. But as Shah stepped out one early Saturday morning in June, to make his way on foot to Hashtnagri police station, he was followed by masked men on a motorbike. As one drew out an AK-47 rifle, Shah spotted him and tried to wrestle it away but the accomplice raised a pistol and riddled Shah with bullets.
The attackers were never caught but it did not take long for the Pakistan Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), to take credit for Shah’s killing, accusing him of being part of anti-Taliban operations. “Pakistani Taliban are present in every village around here now,” said Ahmed. “It seems they have a network of spies or informants who can tell them about local police who take part in raids on their camps.”
Two of Ahmed’s fellow officers from his police unit in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were also recently blown up in a targeted suicide bombing by TTP. Now he lives in a permanent state of fear. “These terror attacks on police are increasing,” said Ahmed. “We are very vigilant. We cannot go anywhere unnecessary, and I don’t tell anyone when I go out.”
The deadly TTP attacks are just some of thousands that have been taking place across the region that borders Afghanistan, driving a destabilising surge in Taliban militancy, which has swiftly become one of the greatest national security threats facing Pakistan.
On Saturday, deadly clashes erupted along the Pakistan-Afghan border after Islamabad was accused of carrying out airstrikes on Afghan soil, including the capital, Kabul, in what was believed to be an attempt to target the TTP leadership and camps.
The TTP emerged in Pakistan’s tribal-dominated border areas around 2007, amid the US-led “war on terror”. Ideologically aligned to the Afghan Taliban but a separate entity, the group eventually grew to about 30,000 militants, who occupied and controlled swathes of territory in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. After a long and brutal counter-insurgency operation, backed by the US, by 2015 Pakistan’s military had declared a “phenomenal success” in eradicating TTP militants from the mountainous border area.
Yet over the past four years – in direct correlation with the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan – attacks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have once again been dramatically on the rise, leading many to fear a return to the horrors of the TTP heyday in the late 2000s.
According to Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (Acled), so far this year there have been more than 600 attacks by the TTP, the worst in a decade. Thousands of police, paramilitary and military personnel – many targeted while they are off duty – as well as a growing number of civilians have been killed, as part of the TTP’s attempt to destabilise the region. Over the past three months alone, the Center for Research and Security Studies in Pakistan reported a 75% rise in militant violence.
In September, the TTP claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on an army truck that killed nine soldiers, two separate attacks on the 13 September that killed 19 soldiers, the storming of the federal constabulary headquarters in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that left six officers dead, and a car bomb outside a paramilitary headquarters in the region of Balochistan that killed 10 people, many of them civilians.
“It is an environment of terror here and we are living in fear,” said a mine owner from the Mohmand district in Khyber Pakthunkwa, who was forced to close down his mine last month after Taliban militants demanded he hand over money he could not afford.
Nisar Ali, a local political leader and resident of North Waziristan, one of the centres of the insurgency, said the “militants roam freely. They ride bikes and rickshaws without any fear, not far from the military camps. We see them roaming around all night and day. It’s only the movement of the security forces, not the militants, that is restricted.”
A full-blown military counter-insurgency has begun in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and in September the military carried out an airstrike on an alleged TTP camp. However, local people claimed dozens of civilians, including children, were among the dead. For many, the strike evoked traumatic memories of the years of US-led drone strikes, mass displacement and casualties amid the “war on terror” and the previous TTP crackdown.
“Drones, target killings, curfews, the militants roaming in North Waziristan is the new normal,” said Ali. “We see drones flying above our heads but most of the time they kill women, children and the elderly, even our livestock, but not the militants.”
The Pakistan government has laid the blame for the resurgence solely at the feet of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, accusing them of giving the group a safe haven. A UN report last year accused the Taliban fighters of joining the TTP and the Taliban regime of giving regular aid packages to TTP fighters and a monthly financial stipend for its leader, Noor Wali Mehsud.
“The rise in TTP attacks coincides almost perfectly with the Taliban coming to power,” said Pearl Pandya, a senior analyst for Acled. “They’ve turned a blind eye to the new TTP training camps and they released hundreds of TTP militants from prisons, many of whom have found their way back into Pakistan.
“In the face of any Pakistan military operations, TTP militants escape to their safe haven over the border, and then just as easily come back.”
Nonetheless, she also emphasised that Pakistan’s own fragmented political landscape played a role. The imprisonment of the popular former prime minister Imran Khan, who is from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, had led to a widespread loss of trust in the state in the region, that was now being exploited by the TTP to gain support and fuel recruitment. “People here fear the central government and military as much as they fear the Taliban,” said one local person in Mohmand.
The Afghan Taliban denies any involvement with the TTP. “There are no safe havens of TTP in Afghanistan,” said the Afghan Taliban foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi.
Muhammad Ali Saif, an adviser to the chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said that this time round, the TTP militants were much more technologically well-equipped – using equipment left behind by US troops when they withdrew from Afghanistan such as night-vision goggles and sniper weapons – and had carried out numerous operations using quadcopters and other drones.
“The technology and sophisticated weapons available to the militants has changed everything,” said Saif. “The difficulty is that they are living among the population and move in scattered groups at night. They don’t have big bases in Pakistan. Their bases are in Afghanistan.”
Saif was among those opposing large-scale military operations, such as airstrikes, to crush the insurgency, saying that history had proved they only fuelled mistrust of the state and sympathy for militants. Instead he advocated for better dialogue with the Afghan Taliban – efforts he says have been blocked by the central government.
While the TTP resurgence has remained mostly concentrated in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Saif warned that if they continued to mobilise, Taliban militants could push into other regions, as was seen a decade ago. “If this bad faith persists, and this fight spreads to other provinces such as Punjab and Sindh, it will be catastrophic,” he said. “We might see the Pakistani Taliban getting deadlier.”
‘An environment of terror’: deadly resurgence of Pakistan Taliban gathers pace
The Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce and Investment has described Pakistan’s move as a violation of accepted international trade norms.
As four days have passed since the closure of key trade crossings between Afghanistan and Pakistan, concerns are growing over the serious impact on trade and economic activities between the two countries.
The Border Chamber of Commerce and Industry says the continued closure has caused significant losses to traders and calls on both governments to take urgent steps to resolve the issue.
Shahad Hussain, former head of the Border Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said: “At the moment, routes for trade are closed. Our request to both governments is to resolve this issue so that trade and cross-border movement can resume. The damage is not limited to Afghanistan, it also affects ordinary people in Pakistan.”
Meanwhile, the Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce and Investment has described Pakistan’s move as a violation of accepted international trade norms and emphasized that commercial ties should not fall victim to political tensions.
Jan Aqa Naveed, spokesperson for the chamber, said: “Some international trade organizations, including the World Trade Organization (WTO), stress that no obstacles should be placed in the way of Afghanistan’s exports, imports, or transit. Unfortunately, such challenges continue to arise.”
In addition, several Afghan traders say the country should strengthen alternative trade routes through Iran, Central Asia, and China to reduce economic dependency on Pakistan.
Omid Haidari, one of the traders, said: “We urge the authorities of both countries to sign a long-term agreement to facilitate bilateral trade.”
Following recent political and military tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan, major trade crossings, including Torkham, Spin Boldak, Ghulam Khan, Dand Patan, and Shahr Naw, have been shut down in recent days. So far, no specific timeline has been announced for reopening them, and hundreds of cargo trucks remain stuck on both sides of the Durand Line awaiting clearance.
Trade Concerns Mount as Afghanistan-Pakistan Crossings Remain Closed
Speaking during a provincial assembly session, Afridi stressed the importance of maintaining good relations with Afghanistan.
Suhail Afridi, the newly appointed Chief Minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, has urged Pakistan’s central government to review its policy toward Afghanistan.
Speaking during a provincial assembly session, Afridi stressed the importance of maintaining good relations with Afghanistan.
He said: “I ask our central government and military to reconsider their policies toward Afghanistan. All policies concerning Afghanistan should be developed in consultation with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government, local representatives, citizens, and tribal elders.”
He also strongly criticized the rushed expulsion of Afghan refugees from Pakistan, saying: “Our Afghan brothers and sisters, who have lived here for more than 45 years, are now being expelled. What kind of humanity or Islam is this? These people have lived here for decades, built families, and their children were born and raised here. Now they’re being forced out? This is not how policies should be made.”
Some political analysts believe Afridi’s remarks may reflect a shift in part of Pakistan’s power structure regarding Afghanistan, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where there are deep ethnic and cultural ties with Afghans.
Nisar Ahmad Shirzai, a political analyst, said: “If Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies decide to review their policies on Afghanistan, the chances for improved relations between the two countries will increase.”
Aziz Maarij, a former diplomat, said: “Pakistani authorities have always had a dual approach to Afghanistan, on one hand, they speak of peace and friendship, while on the other, they engage in conflict, violence, and interference.”
Afridi also called the closure of border crossings near tribal areas harmful to both countries and stressed the need for their reopening.
This comes after Suhail Afridi was elected as Chief Minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Monday during a session in Peshawar, winning a majority vote.
Suhail Afridi Urges Rethink of Pakistan’s Afghanistan Strategy
However, Kabul has repeatedly rejected their requests to visit Afghanistan.
Reliable sources within the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan have confirmed to TOLOnews that over the past three days, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, Pakistan’s Defense Minister; Asim Malik, the head of intelligence; and two other generals each submitted separate requests for visas to travel to Afghanistan.
Zabihullah Mujahid, spokesperson for the Islamic Emirate, also confirms that due to violations of Afghanistan’s airspace, the request for a Pakistani delegation’s travel to Kabul was denied.
Mr. Mujahid stated: “They had asked for their high-level delegation to come to Afghanistan, but because of the airspace violations, the Emirate did not permit the trip and rejected their request.”
So far, Pakistani officials have not formally commented on the repeated visa rejections for their military and intelligence delegation by the Afghan side.
Some political analysts say that Kabul’s rejection of Pakistani officials’ visa requests indicates a shift in the Emirate’s diplomatic approach and an emphasis on the principle of mutual respect in bilateral relations. In their view, Islamabad must cease violating Afghan airspace and pursue dialogue.
Mohammad Amin Karim, a political analyst, said: “Afghanistan’s national interests demand that our country maintains healthy and constructive relations with all its neighbors, especially Pakistan. Unfortunately, ever since Pakistan’s artificial creation, this problem has remained a festering wound.”
Sayed Bilal Fatemi, another political analyst, added: “At this moment, after having violated Afghan territory without any documented reason or evidence against all international laws, their request to visit is like salt in the wound of the Afghan people.”
These developments come after Pakistan carried out air strikes last Thursday night, violating Afghanistan’s airspace. In response, on Saturday (19th of Mizan), forces of the Islamic Emirate launched a retaliatory operation along the Durand Line.
As a result of these attacks, 58 Pakistani soldiers were killed, 30 wounded, and 25 military posts came under the control of the Emirate’s forces.
Afghanistan Denies Visa for Pakistani Officials Amid Airspace Dispute
As earthquakes devastated parts of Afghanistan in late August, Taliban officials asked aid agencies to send more female health workers to assist female survivors. They also briefly barred female U.N. staffers from reaching earthquake-devastated areas.
The flurry of contradictions in the wake of the earthquake did not end there.
Amid the aftermath, as aid groups and Taliban bureaucrats were assisting those injured and left homeless by the earthquake, other Taliban officials twice suspended most internet and cellular reception throughout Afghanistan, complicating aid efforts.
The incidents highlight the contortions of the Taliban four years after seizing power of Afghanistan.
“It’s an ongoing struggle,” said a senior analyst, who requested anonymity because the Taliban has cracked down on people perceived as critical of them.
(That individual, like more than a dozen people that NPR spoke to for this story, including senior representatives of international charities, local residents and respected analysts, asked that NPR not use their names. Others requested we only use their first names. Some of the people were worried their organizations would be punished if they were even perceived as being critical of the Taliban or were concerned about denials of visas for foreign staff or losing the right to continue operations.)
That to-and-fro could be seen in the Taliban’s response to the deadly earthquake, which was most devastating in the isolated mountains of the eastern Kunar province in late August. Mud-and-stone homes clinging to steep mountainsides collapsed upon their sleeping inhabitants. From the vantage point of a helicopter, it looked like entire villages “had just been scraped off the sides of hills,” said Richard Trenchard, acting humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan.
Where were the women?
In the first days after the earthquake struck, the Taliban shared a stream of videos of their defense forces choppering out the wounded from isolated villages. The wounded in these reels were all men, as if the Taliban had landed in villages with no female inhabitants.
A local aid worker, who goes by one name, Wahidullah, told NPR that women were airlifted out, but in compliance with the Taliban’s rules and cultural norms, they were not filmed and were segregated inside the helicopter. One video, filmed by a local aid group, accidentally showed women being rescued: They were huddled in the back of one chopper, most clad in burkhas.
And two senior aid workers said Taliban officials encouraged them to send more female workers to help women and girls impacted by the earthquake because of Afghanistan’s deeply conservative culture that limits male contact with females, and the Taliban’s own rules that demand strict gender segregation. “They were encouraging and requesting us to provide more, particularly in the case of medical support to women,” said Trenchard. Another senior aid worker told NPR, “The Taliban were asking for women doctors, they were asking for female medical teams, all female medical teams. We didn’t have the resources available to give.”
The Taliban’s request for more women workers came despite the ratcheting restrictions that the group has been imposing since they seized power four years ago. That includes preventing most women and girls from study and work.
Based on NPR’s reporting since the Taliban seized power, those restrictions appear to have been ordered by the group’s spiritual leader. Hibatullah Akhundzada lives in near-total secrecy in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar and rarely makes public appearances. Analysts point to how the restrictions have held, despite high-level pushback by other prominent clerics, and multiple attempts on the ground to sidestep the rules.
That pushback included the former deputy foreign minister Sher Abbas Stanikzai, who left Afghanistan in February after publicly criticizing the ban on girls studying beyond grade six multiple times. The Taliban’s first higher education minister turned a blind eye to women attending university — even after a decision to let girls attend high school was dramatically rescinded in March 2022 — after girls had been told they could attend, and had to be pushed out of classrooms. (By December 2022, the Taliban had stopped most women from attending university.)
After Afghan women were evicted from universities, the ministry of public health appeared to push back, creating a years-long nursing and midwifery course for Afghan women so they could help other women. “It made hardliners uncomfortable,” said the analyst who spoke on condition of anonymity, who saw it as “a workaround to our ban.” The nursing and midwifery course was junked in December last year, only months after it began, apparently on the orders of the Taliban’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada. The move highlighted how “the most ultraconservative bit of the movement is in control and is increasing control,” said Kate Clark, co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, a prominent research group.
That increasing control has come to the detriment of women and girls. They are mostly banned from being attended to by male doctors and medics. That’s left women’s health care in the hands of a diminishing number of women.
At the time, a prominent researcher on Afghanistan,Heather Barr of Human Rights Watch, put it this way: “If you ban women from being treated by male health care professionals, and then you ban women from training to become health care professionals, the consequences are clear: Women will not have access to health care and will die as a result.”
There is no country-wide data for Afghanistan, but it appears that not only are no new women coming through the Afghan health care system, there are fewer qualified women still working. Some appear to be leaving Afghanistan. The Afghanistan Analysts Network, also reported others were leaving amid plummeting salaries and deteriorating conditions. The network also reported female health workers saying that their newer colleagues were likely to be unskilled women who came from Taliban-loyal families.
Why aid workers faced obstacles
The lack of qualified female workers became one of the many obstacles that aid workers grappled with as they sought to reach the dead and wounded hours after the earthquake devastated parts of Afghanistan on September 1.
Another obstacle hindering the rescue of women was that the Taliban prevented female U.N. workers from reaching devastated areas. In a September 11, statement, the U.N. also said Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers had prevented female U.N. staffers and contractors from entering their workplaces in the capital Kabul, the western city of Herat and the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.
Trenchard, the acting U.N. humanitarian coordinator, said Taliban authorities did ultimately allow women working for the U.N. to assist earthquake victims in the field after negotiations, but they have not been allowed to return to their offices. Taliban authorities did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
All this meant that few female aid workers were available to treat women and girls injured by the earthquakes. Even to reach them, aid workers walked for hours on perilous roads on steep mountainsides. One female rescuer told the U.N.’s news service how they were “dodging falling rocks every time there was an aftershock.” The female health workers were expected to walk in headscarves and long loose robes. They also needed a mahram, a male guardian — a man related by blood whom a woman cannot marry, like a brother or nephew, or her own husband. That mahram has to be licensed by the Taliban.
In some cases, it appears that women who were injured in the earthquake were left unattended, until female health workers arrived. Aid workers said it wasn’t just the Taliban’s prohibitions on men treating women. Local communities also did not allow men, whether rescuers or medics, to help their female relatives. “They were very strict and did not allow us to even see the wounded,” said Omid Haqjo, a volunteer who hiked nine hours to lend a hand in an area known as the Mazar Dara Valley. He said it was a devastating sight, because “most of the injured were children and women.”
Some women and girls had not received any health care, even two weeks after the earthquake, said aid worker, Fereshteh, who had been assigned to help females shifted to tents after their homes were destroyed.
Gharshin, the 50-year-old health worker, said what frustrated her was that the conservative Afghan traditions — alongside the Taliban’s rules — meant that women could not be attended to except by other women. “Imagine,” she said, during the last earthquake, “that women’s clothes came off, or maybe their clothes were torn. They may be in a situation where it is difficult for a male rescuer to dare to pick her up. So it is natural that there should be a woman doing the rescuing.”
Why did the internet go down?
But if there was any hope that Taliban authorities might relax their prohibitions on women studying, if only to help other women, it was dashed just two weeks after the earthquake struck.
On September 15, Taliban authorities rolled out a suspension of operations of the fiber optic cable that provides affordable and fast internet to most Afghans. The move was to “prevent evil,” according to Haji Zaid, spokesperson for the northern city of Balkh. But one of the casualties was the thousands of women and girls, who were studying online after being denied physical access to school.
Access was resumed in most places, until it was shut down again for 48 hours on September 29, alongside mobile cellular reception.
During the first internet suspension, one father described to NPR how his daughters were quiet, pale and withdrawn after the internet was cut off. They were studying through an online university. He requested anonymity for the safety of his daughters. “It’s the same frustration,” he said of four years under the Taliban, “and the same darkness.”
Akbari reported from Paris. With additional reporting by Ruchi Kumar in Istanbul.
Afghan earthquake triggers contradictory Taliban tactics on rescuing women
He supported America’s war, escaped Afghanistan and started a family in the U.S. Then ICE arrested him. If he is deported, he expects the Taliban to kill him.
In his cell, the light glows all night, so he pulls a blanket over his head and burrows into the darkness. Then comes his nightmare, about the Taliban fighter whose face appears in a cloud of black smoke, beard long, hand reaching toward him. He runs and he runs until he wakes up, gasping.
Now, in the light, he worries it’s not a dream but a vision of his future in Afghanistan, where he will be tortured and killed, where his wife will starve, where his son will be forced to join the militants, where his daughter will become an old man’s fourth wife.
This is the place the U.S. government delivered him out of and the place it intends to send him back to.
“I’m so scared from Taliban,” he said in a call to his attorney after another hard night at the immigrant detention centerin Virginia. “Right now, my body is shaking. My hands are shaking, if I am thinking about them.”
He and his wife had been among the tens of thousands of Afghans desperate to escape Kabul’s airport in August 2021, when a suicide bomber killed more than 180 people, including 13 U.S. service members. They heard the explosion, saw the wounded, and less than a day later, they packed into a U.S. military cargo plane bound for Qatar.
In the United States, he was granted humanitarian parole, allowing the couple to remain while his case was processed. He applied for asylum in 2022 and waited for a decision that never came. Then, in July, as President Donald Trump’s administration was dismantling programs created to assist Afghan allies, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested him.
At a time when the courts are denying a record number of asylum claims, a judge will soon decide whether he should be deported. If he is returned, he expects the Taliban to be waiting for him.
The regime, he says, knows his family supported the U.S. for years. He taught teenagers how to use computers for a U.S.-based nonprofit, defied the fundamentalist interpretation of Islam andattended American University of Afghanistan, a symbol of Western ideals. His older brother risked his life as an interpreter for the U.S. Army, narrowly escaping two suicide bombings, before he moved to Virginia and earned his citizenship.
For their family’s safety, The Washington Post is identifying the man in custody only by an initial, H.
The Trump administration has called its deportation targets “the worst of the worst” — “monstrous” and “barbaric” criminals who entered the country illegally. “Animals,” Trump has said. “Not human.”
But the 200,000 Afghans who have found refuge in this country since the war’s end hold a unique place in the diaspora of American immigrants. Many braved extraordinary danger on the government’s behalf, and the overwhelming majority came here legally. Lawmakers hosted news conferences to celebrate the arriving heroes. Churches found them homes, clothes, jobs. At airports, greeters held signs in Dari that read, “Welcome to your new home.”
In a statement to The Post, Homeland Security’s assistant secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, called H “illegal” and an “unvetted alien from a high threat country.”
“The Biden administration abused its parole authority and let in unvetted illegal aliens including known suspected terrorists, gang members and criminals, and the Trump administration is correcting that.”
McLaughlin acknowledged to The Post that she described H as “illegal” only because her department revoked his parole when it arrested him. Homeland Security declined to say whether it suspected H, who is in his late 20s,of supporting terrorism or how many “known suspected terrorists” it had identified.
H, a fluent English speaker who worked as a bookkeeper in Virginia, has not been charged with any crime.
“He’s not illegal, and he’s not unvetted. He couldn’t have been any more vetted,” said his attorney, Amin Ganjalizadeh. “He followed every conceivable rule there is to follow.”
To board the C-17 out of Afghanistan, according to H and his wife, he provided documents showing more than a decade of work and education that aligned with U.S. interests. His brother, beloved by the U.S. Marines and Army officers he served with, vouched for him. He submitted to background checks in Qatar and atDulles International Airport. At Fort Pickett in Virginia, where he and his wife were housed for a month, they each provided photos and fingerprints to run through international databases. They were screened again when they applied for their humanitarian parole and work authorizations, and H’s asylum application required him to interview with Homeland Security for nearly two hours.
Now, on his worst nights in the detention center, he reminds himself of the promise America made to Afghans who supported its cause: “Nobody will be left behind.”
H thought that was true four years ago, he says, when he and his wife moved in with his brother in Virginia. For 12 hours a day, he drove for Uber and built furniture in a factory, and at night, he took accounting classes online. He had two children, a girl and a boy, and sang them “Wheels on the Bus” in English. His only traffic ticket, for going 37 in a 25, was dismissed by a judge. He celebrated Thanksgiving with new friends, adopted the Chicago Bears, savored the buffet at Golden Corral. He imagined taking the naturalization oath and raising his family in the suburbs. He believed in Donald Trump.
“I belong to this country,” H decided one day, so when he saw American flag stickers on his neighbors’ trucks and SUVs, he ordered one for himself.
He had just asked his wife to send him their grocery list when H noticed lights flashing in his rearview mirror. She listened over the phone as an officer asked him to confirm his name, then ordered him out of the car. That’s when he spotted the letters on the man’s chest.
“I’m being arrested by ICE,” he told his wife, and she went silent, unable to speak.
H, who’d been on his way to the bookkeeping job he started in March, said he felt the pinch of handcuffs for the first time in his life. By then, four law enforcement vehicles had pulled up, he recalled. Some of the men wore masks.“Why am I being arrested?” H asked.
It was a morning in mid-July, and the officer, he said, told him his immigration documents had expired.
That wasn’t true, H replied, and he could prove it.
“Can you let me grab my ID? It’s in the car,” he recalled pleading, but the officer refused.
H, who shared an abbreviated version of this account in a sworn affidavit, said he asked to call his lawyer, but the officers denied him that, too.
His driver’s license and employment authorization were both valid through July 31, three weeks after his arrest, The Post confirmed. Federal records show that his humanitarian parole wasn’t scheduled to expire until late August.
Homeland Security did not respond to questions about the interactionor the case. In a three-page letter to H dated 28 daysafter his detainment, a department official wrote that the agency had terminated his parole after it “determined that neither humanitarian reasons nor public benefit warrant your continued presence in the United States.”
Both H and his wife, E, still have family in Afghanistan, and because of the Taliban’s documented history of retribution, The Post is withholding many details that it has confirmed and would typically report.
“If an Afghan ally’s name is identified, then any family to that person may be persecuted,” said retired Marine Anna Lloyd, executive director at Task Force Argo, a nonprofit that has evacuated thousands of interpreters and others who served alongside the U.S. military. “The de facto leadership operating in Afghanistan doesn’t stop at killing the person of interest. It’s not unheard of for them to kill the bloodline.”
That’s why The Post is excluding the names, ages and locations of H and his family; the name of the nonprofit he served and companies he worked for in Afghanistan, most of the schools he’s attended, the firm that employed him at the time of his arrest and the detention facility where he’s being held; the specific timing of his arrival and other events; the date and site of his hearing and the judge who will decide his future.
H had hired Ganjalizadeh in March to help with his stalled asylum application, and the attorney had told him not to worry. None of his Afghan clients had ever been arrested or denied asylum.
Under Trump, though, the U.S.’s treatment of displaced Afghans has shifted dramatically. His administration canceled humanitarian parole and other protections for tens of thousands who, like H, the U.S. government brought to this country. For many more still stranded abroad, Trump officials have made resettlements nearly impossible.
Since January, ICE has targeted Afghans more aggressively than in recent years, detaining at least 133 through late July, according to figures gathered by the Deportation Data Project. How many have been sent back remains unclear.
In May, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem claimed there had been “notable improvements” in Afghanistanunder the repressive regime, which continues to oversee widespread hunger and poverty, has prohibited millions of girls from receiving an education and recently shut down the internet across the country. In her statement, she said that “requiring the return of Afghan nationals to Afghanistan does not pose a threat to their personal safety.”
Just this month, the U.N. Human Rights Council passed a resolution arguing that the Taliban’s system of oppression “should shock the conscience of humanity.” The council asserted that the militants have erased women and girls from public life, arbitrarily executed former officials, tortured peaceful protesters and disappeared activists.
Afghans facing deportation seldom give interviews because they fear that the Taliban will retaliate against them or their families. H and his family provided The Post rare access to their experience on the condition that the story protect their identities.
Post reporter John Woodrow Cox interviewed H for hours, witnessed lengthy calls with his attorney and accompanied his older brother, M, during a visit to the ICE detention facility where H is being held. Along with photographer Carolyn Van Houten, Cox spent hours at home with M and H’s wife, E. To verify elements of H’s account, Cox interviewed friends and former colleagues of the family as well as the founder of the nonprofit H worked for in Afghanistan. Cox also reviewed hundreds of pages of documents and photographs detailing H, E and M’s work, education and immigration histories.
This story is part of an ongoing examination into how President Donald Trump’s overhaul of the federal government is reshaping America.
The Post wants to hear from people who have been affected. You can contact us by email or Signal encrypted message.
H had long admired the president, whom he refers to as “Mr. Trump.” The U.S. military’s disastrous pullout had left him and many other Afghans disillusioned with former president Joe Biden’s administration, but Trump promised strength, suggesting he would retake Bagram air base.
H had heard Trump’s rhetoric on immigration, but his threats seemed focused on people who crossed the border illegally.
“I was supportive,” H recalled. “I was saying, ‘Yes, every country has their rights. If you’re a president, you should protect your country.’”
He told his brother last year that if he had a vote, he would cast it for Trump.
“Why?” his brother asked.
“He’s thinking about us,” said H, who had always seen himself as the sort of person America would welcome.
His father had taught him that Afghanistan could never be free if its people were not educated. So, to learn English, H listened to CNN for hours and studied the subtitles on episodes of “Lost.” He memorized every word to Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On,” from “Titanic,” and translated them into Dari for his friends.
“He has a tremendous capacity of leadership, positive thought, independent work and the desire to channel his ideas through creative methods,” a teacher in Afghanistan wrote in a recommendation letter, calling him “among the best students I have ever taught.”
H’s parents arranged his marriage, but he insisted on one condition: The woman they chose had to be educated. In E, who is in her 20s, he found a wife with shared ideals. She aspired to become a doula.
“One day, maybe we will have a good life,” he told her. “We will have our master’s degrees. You will be a doctor. I will be a good accountant, and we will have a good life.”
The couple left nearly everything they owned in Afghanistan. He came with only two shirts, but more than a dozen diplomas, report cards and academic certificates, half from his study of English.
In Virginia, when his daughter learned to count to 10 before she turned 2, he prayed she would grow up to work for NASA as a scientist.
He wonders what his three-month detainment has done to his kids, both U.S. citizens. They sometimes refuse to eat now, and his daughter no longer sleeps through the night. When they ask where Dada is, E doesn’t know what to tell them.
The first time they visited him at the detention center, his son, a toddler, climbed atop the table and pounded his small fists into the glass that separated them.
“Open it!” he screamed. “Open it!”
Afterward, H asked his wife not to bring them back for a while.
Now, his mind returns every day to what an investigator told him just after the arrest.
“What will happen to my wife and kids?” H asked.
“Don’t worry,” he said the agent replied. If the U.S. government sent him back to Afghanistan, it would send them, too.
Have you ever been a member or have you supported the Taliban or any other terrorist group?” Ganjalizadeh asked over the phone from his office in Falls Church.
“No,” H answered from his cell in the detention center. “Never.”
Every word would matter at the asylum hearing, his attorney had explained, so they needed to prepare. Ganjalizadeh didn’t know what evidence, if any, Homeland Security might present, but he suspected prosecutors would scrutinize former friends and relatives for links to terrorism.
Such ties are not unusual, Afghan experts told The Post, because terrorist groups have flourished in the country for decades and, after the U.S. withdrawal, the Taliban seized control of all 34 provinces. Millions of Afghans are going hungry, leaving former U.S. allies with a brutal choice, the experts say: Work with the Taliban or starve.
But any association, no matter how distant, could derail an asylum claim. U.S. statutes governing the process are so broad, Ganjalizadeh said, that if an applicant served tea a decade ago to someone affiliated with a terrorist group, it could disqualify them.
Now, on the call, H told his attorney that the FBI had showed him a photo of Islamic extremists that the investigators claimed came from a laptop he had owned in Afghanistan.
“I am 100 percent sure this is not from my laptop,” H recalled telling the agents, who he said acknowledged they’d made a mistake. “In my laptop, you will find my studies, my teachers’ lectures, my books, my pictures.”
The FBI declined to answer questions about the case, citing its policy not to confirm or deny the existence of investigations.
H’s case comes at a time when the courts, under immense pressure from the Trump administration, are denying a far higher percentage of asylum claims than they did in years past. Unlike federal judges who receive lifetime appointments meant to ensure independence, immigration judges work for the Department of Justice. Dozens have been fired since Trump took office.
Former judges, union leaders and members of Congress allege that the sweeping dismissals are a political ploy to accelerate deportations.
Immigration judges denied 76 percent of asylum claims between February and August, according to an analysis of data collected by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. That represents a 24 percent increase over the same period last year, and the total number of denials — more than 58,000 — is the highest during any seven-month stretch in at least a quarter century.
Ganjalizadeh tried to assure H that his claim would be persuasive.
“One of the most important things about your case is something called credibility — whether the judge believes you, whether the prosecutor believes you,” the attorney said into the phone. “We already have a lot of evidence to show who you are as a person.”
H would make a compelling witness, Ganjalizadeh thought. His tone was gentle but confident. He told stories in fine detail. He could forgo an interpreter and address the court in English. And he’d been embraced by his American community.
Fifteen people sent letters to the judge on his behalf, including his boss and children’s doctor.
“I have come to know him as one of the best people I’ve ever met,” one friend wrote. “He is honest, respectful, and always willing to help others.”
“He spoke with heartfelt conviction about his American dream and his desire to raise his children — both born here — as proud, contributing citizens of this country,” wrote Russell York, a former civilian contractor who worked alongside H’s brother in Afghanistan. “He is not only hardworking and honest, but also hopeful and deeply patriotic.”
“They are not only peaceful and law-abiding but also hard-working, generous people who would be an asset to our country,” wrote Brittney Rossie, who, along with her husband, Alex, has become close with H and E. “Our nation asked for help during a time of conflict, and this family answered that call. Now, we must stand with them.”
The letters helped, Ganjalizadeh told him, but most critically, H needed the judge to understand the danger he would face in Afghanistan, so H decided he would share his memories of violence.
On a summer evening in late August 2016, he was reading a cost accounting book in the library at American University of Afghanistan in Kabul when a car bomb exploded outside. It shook the building. He ran toward a back door. By morning, the Taliban had killed at least 15 people, among them seven students and a professor.
“Why do you think they would want to kill you?” the attorney asked.
“Because we were against each other. Our ideas were against each other,” he replied, explaining that the regime had distorted Islam. “My religious idea is against them. Totally different with them. My political idea.”
Homeland Security would later file a collection of exhibits in H’s case suggesting it intends to argue that Afghanistan is now safe to return to.
The evidence noted that local airports continue to function and that there had been few documented cases of abuse among Afghans returning from nearby countries, such as Pakistan and Turkey. The filing also showed that the educational nonprofit H once worked for appeared to remain open, though no one responded to messages The Post sent to its email address, and the group’s founder said she believed it had ceased operating inside the country.
One included report, published in Europe last year, never mentioned the U.S., but it suggested that the Taliban had little information on returning Afghans, who would not be persecuted simply because they had left. In passages Homeland Security did not highlight for the court, the report said that Afghans who departed after 2021 are often considered “traitors and sinners,” those deemed “Westernized” may be threatened, and anyone who learns English could face violence.
Now, in Ganjalizadeh’s office, he reached the last of his 70 questions. H would do well in court, the attorney told him, but his client acknowledged he’d begun to deteriorate. The nightmares persisted. He’d lost weight.
“I’m getting so much depression. During the night, I don’t have sleep, thinking about, thinking negative, about if I’ve been deported,” he said. “I know a woman in Afghanistan who had five kids. She couldn’t survive. She couldn’t give food to the five kids, and she decided to sell one of her kids.”
He began to weep.
“What will happen to my kids?” he asked, the pitch in his voice rising. “What will happen to my wife?”
For nine seconds, the phone went quiet.
“One day I helped U.S. against Taliban,” he said, “and today, they are sending me back to them? For what?”
His wife sometimes felt like a prisoner, too. E’s driver’s license had also expired in the weeks after her husband’s arrest, which meant she couldn’t pick up groceries or practice English with her friends at a local church, attend doula classes or take her son to the pediatrician.
“Don’t worry,” H told her. “I will come to you.”
She worried anyway.
“That I can’t study more,” she said, listing her fears. “I can’t get a job, my dream job. My daughter won’t be able to study.”
When he came home, her husband promised, they would rebuild the life they’d started. H would try to get his old job back and prepareharder for the certified public accountant exam. E would retake the courses she’d dropped, even if he had to drive her. When the kids were asleep and the work was done, they would eat popcornon the couch and catch up on episodes of “The 100,” their favorite sci-fi show on Netflix.
E had never applied for asylum, both because she didn’t have a strong case for it and because she expected her husband’s claim, if it was granted, to extend her the same protections.
Still, even when her humanitarian parole expired, they both felt certain that ICE would not arrest her, too.
“Because of my children,” E explained on a September afternoon, one day before an email from Homeland Security arrived in her inbox.
“YOU ARE ORDERED to appear before an immigration judge…,” the letter read, “to show why you should not be removed from the United States… .”
Her head throbbed. She didn’t know what to do, so she texted her teachers. That night, two of them stopped by.
Esther Jones and Nora Twum had met E more than a year earlier at a Christian ministry in Northern Virginia where they taught English, primarily to Afghan women. She’d become a star student, eager for correction, interpreting for her classmates. Many of them attended, Jones said, so they could communicate with their kids’ doctors and teachers, but E had made clear she was preparing for a career.
In the basement at her brother-in-law’s home, where she lived, E welcomed Jones and Twum with cups of chai and a plate of pistachios and green raisins. She was too distraught to eat.
If E was taken into custody, Jones asked, who would she want to care for her children?
E didn’t understand.
“Are they going to come for me?” she asked as tears streaked her cheeks.
The women told her to make a plan for the kids, and put it in writing.
“I’m so sorry,” Twum said, keeping to herself what she really thought: “This is inhumane.”
E spoke to her husband the next morning. He thought they should consult with his attorney.
For now, she shouldn’t walk the kids to the park as often, H told her. And she shouldn’t visit him anymore.
He had been held for 70 days in an American detention center for unwanted foreigners, but he still could not accept that the people in charge of this country would deprive his children of their mother.
“Our Homeland Security, they’re human. They know you have kids. They know. They said they have kids,” he told her. “They will not do this.”
What he didn’t know was that they had done this, to other immigrants, for years. In Trump’s first term, the U.S. government separated more than 4,000 children from their parents, with no plan to reunite them. Since Trump took office a second time, ICE has stripped away hundreds more, sending many to federal shelters.
The sun had nearly set on an orange-sky Sunday evening last month, and H’s brother, M, was still waiting in a visitation line outside the detention center. A flock of starlings sang in a nearby tree. Kids drew shapes on the sidewalk with rocks.
M’s mind was on politics. The former interpreter had heard about all the immigration judges being fired, and he understood that those who remained, including the one overseeing his brother’s case, might feel pressure to deny more claims.
“What about the oath?” he asked. “The judge oaths that he will say the right things, or he will do the right thing, not the wrong thing.”
Years ago, when his work uniform came with a bulletproof vest, M never left home without telling his wife and mother goodbye, because he understood the risk of serving the U.S. military. Once, M said, a firefight trapped him in a car for 18 hours.
Now he recalled his naturalization ceremony.
“I oath for this country,” he said, raising his right hand as an American flag hung limp from a pole 30 feet behind him.
“Trying to cross the red light, I remember that I oath,” he continued. “I oath, not going to do anything wrong for this country.”
An hour later, M reached the front of the line. He signed in and passed through a metal detector. From the vending machines, he bought a Butterfinger, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Takis Fuego chips, H’s favorite.
A staff member escorted him to the first bay, and he spotted his brother through the glass. They smiled at each other and reached for the black phones on the wall.
H had worn a white, long-sleeve shirt beneath his buttoned-up blue uniform, but M could tell his brother had lost more weight. Prayer beads H had fashioned from dried coffee grounds hung from his wrist, and on his hand was a wedding ring. To make it, he’d unscrewed the cap from a water bottle and peeled off the small plastic band, then meticulously wrapped it in a soft white wire.
“To show everyone that I love my wife,” he said.
M assured him that she and the kids were okay, and he asked about life inside the center.
Most of the other inmates only spoke Spanish, H said, but he had made some friends. He joined in the soccer matches outside and learned to play spades, conquian, ocho loco. When word spread that he was a bookkeeper, H said, he became the de facto estate manager for people who got out, holding onto leftover items to pass on to new arrivals. He divvied out cups, plates, $18 shirts so the guys wouldn’t have to buy new ones.
“If he saves that,” H said, “he might can call his wife two, three weeks.”
Most of the men he’d met were undocumented or had been charged with a felony, usually DUI. One, from Guatemala, had lived in the U.S. for 25 years. He’d told H that he worked a steady job, bought a home, paid his taxes, had five children.
The mass deportations reminded H of an Afghan idiom: “When the fire comes, wet and dry, everything will burn.”
H had begun to think he wasn’t the only wet tree set ablaze in a forest of immigrants, and he couldn’t help but question Trump. He’d met dozens of other inmates who, even if they’d crossed the border illegally, had built meaningful lives in the U.S. Now the government was sending many of them to places they hardly knew.
“How it can be applied for everybody?” he asked. “Somebody have property here, somebody have kids here, somebody have business here. You know, people, they don’t have nothing in their country. Everything is here.”
Near the visit’s end, M suggested that what H had endured might help him in the years to come. Whatever investigation the government had undertaken would surely resolve any doubts about his background or allegiances.
“I’m sure there is nothing to worry about.”
H nodded.
“Of course,” he said, recalling what he had told himself when he first arrived in the U.S.
“I will have my kids here,” he said. “I will have my education here. I will raise my kids here. They will go here to school, to public school. They will have American friends. They will speak English. And one day I will die, and I will go in this land. My grave will be in this land.”
He finished his bag of chips, and the brothers said goodbye. H ate beans for dinner, checked in with his wife and went to bed. Then he pulled the blanket over his head and hoped that what he had told himself was true.
Emmanuel Martinez and Monika Mathur contributed to this report.
The U.S. saved him from the Taliban, but now it wants to send him back
Some citizens stated that they stand firmly with the country’s security forces and will support them under any circumstances.
Following recent clashes between the forces of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and the Pakistani military, a number of Afghan citizens expressed strong support for the Islamic Emirate’s forces and condemned Pakistan’s repeated violations of Afghan airspace.
Some citizens stated that they stand firmly with the country’s security forces and will support them under any circumstances.
Mohibullah, a resident of Kandahar, said: “If needed, we will also join the Mujahideen and the army of the Islamic Emirate on the battlefield.”
Fereshta, a resident of Kabul, said: “We thank the security forces who have always defended our land. We will always stand with them and support them in any way we can.”
Meanwhile, others called on international organizations to seriously investigate and address Pakistan’s repeated airspace violations.
According to these citizens, preserving the territorial integrity of Afghanistan is a shared responsibility of all Afghans, and international bodies must also pay serious attention to this matter.
Baitullah, a resident of Paktia, stated: “The Islamic Emirate gave them a proper response. All the people are standing with them against Pakistan.”
Abdul Ghafour, a resident of Kabul, said: “We defend the Islamic Emirate and our country. No foreigner has the right to interfere in our homeland.”
Citizens across several provinces emphasized their support for the forces of the Islamic Emirate, asserting that defending the country’s territorial integrity and responding to any foreign aggression is the legitimate right of the Afghan people.
Kabul Jan, a resident of Paktia, said: “The Islamic Emirate does not seek conflict with anyone, but Pakistan continues to oppress us.”
Gul Mohammad, a resident of Kabul, said: “We ask the international community to stop Pakistan’s actions.”
Abdul Razaq, another Kabul resident, stated: “We urge the international community to stop Pakistan’s attacks. What have our innocent children done? They are being bombed at night. This is oppression and an invasion of our land.”
Tensions along the Hypothetical Durand Line have intensified in recent days after Islamic Emirate officials accused Pakistani forces of repeatedly violating Afghan airspace.
In response, the Ministry of Defense of the Islamic Emirate stated that it had launched a “retaliatory operation” along the Hypothetical Durand Line, inflicting casualties on Pakistani forces.
At the same time, the Islamic Emirate reaffirmed its commitment to peaceful relations with all neighboring countries, but warned that any violation of Afghanistan’s sovereignty would be met with a response.
Afghans Rally Behind Islamic Emirate Forces After Clashes with Pakistan
He clarified that certain areas of girls’ education have been temporarily suspended until further notice.
The Foreign Minister of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has stated that Kabul is not opposed to education and that girls’ education has not been declared forbidden in the country. He clarified that certain areas of girls’ education have been temporarily suspended until further notice.
In a press conference at the Afghan Embassy in India, Amir Khan Muttaqi said that currently, ten million students are receiving education in Afghanistan, of whom at least 2.8 million are girls.
He added that during his meeting with India’s Foreign Minister, he requested New Delhi to invest in Afghanistan’s mining, healthcare, agriculture, and sports sectors.
Mr. Muttaqi also discussed the effective use of the Chabahar port during his talks with his Indian counterpart and called for the reopening of the Wagah border crossing between Afghanistan and India.
The Foreign Minister said he has asked Indian officials to release Afghan prisoners held in India and facilitate their return to Afghanistan.
He further stated that during his visit to Darul Uloom Deoband, discussions were held regarding the exchange of academic experiences between Afghanistan and the institution.
In response to a journalist’s question regarding the exclusion of female reporters from Friday’s press conference, Amir Khan Muttaqi explained that only a limited number of journalists were invited by technical staff, and that there was no other specific issue behind it.
Muttaqi: Girls’ Education Not Banned in Afghanistan, Only Partially Suspend
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan said Sunday it killed 58 Pakistani soldiers in overnight border operations, in response to what it called repeated violations of its territory and airspace. Pakistan’s army gave far lower casualty figures, saying 23 troops were killed.
Earlier in the week, Afghan authorities accused Pakistan of bombing the capital, Kabul, and a market in the country’s east. Pakistan did not claim responsibility for the assault.
The Taliban government’s chief spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said Afghan forces have captured 25 Pakistani army posts, leaving 30 Pakistani soldiers wounded.
“The situation on all official borders and de facto lines of Afghanistan is under complete control, and illegal activities have been largely prevented,” Mujahid told a news conference in Kabul.
Pakistan has previously struck locations inside Afghanistan, targeting what it alleges are militant hideouts, but these have been in remote and mountainous areas. The two sides have also skirmished along the border in the past. Saturday night’s heavy clashes underscore the deepening tensions.
The Taliban government’s Defense Ministry said early Sunday morning its forces had conducted “retaliatory and successful operations” along the border.
“If the opposing side again violates Afghanistan’s territorial integrity, our armed forces are fully prepared to defend the nation’s borders and will deliver a strong response,” the ministry added.
The Torkham crossing, one of two main trade routes between the two countries, did not open on Sunday at its usual time of 8 a.m.
The crossing at Chaman, southwest Pakistan, was also closed. People, including Afghan refugees leaving Pakistan, were turned away due to the worsening security situation.
An Associated Press reporter in Chaman heard jets over Spin Boldak, a city in Afghanistan’s southern Kandahar province, and saw smoke rising after an explosion.
Regional powers call for calm
Pakistan accuses Afghan authorities of harboring members of the banned group Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan. Islamabad says the group carries out deadly attacks inside Pakistan, but Kabul denies the charge, saying it does not allow its territory to be used against other countries.
Pakistan is grappling with surging militancy, especially in areas bordering Afghanistan. It also accuses its nuclear-armed neighbor and rival India of backing armed groups, without providing any evidence.
The overnight border clashes could fuel regional instability, as India and Pakistan came close to war earlier this year after a tourist massacre in the disputed region of Kashmir.
India has also boosted its relations with Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers, most recently announcing an upgrade of its technical mission in Kabul to a full embassy.
The Saudi Foreign Ministry called for “restraint, avoidance of escalation and the adoption of dialogue and wisdom to help de-escalate tensions and maintain the security and stability of the region.” Saudi Arabia just reached a mutual defense pact with Pakistan. Qatar also urged restraint.
The Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, who is in India on an official visit, told journalists that Afghanistan respected the calls made by the two Gulf powers to stop what he called “retaliatory strikes” against Pakistan. But he also warned that Kabul reserved the right to protect itself.
“We want a peaceful resolution of the situation, but if the peace efforts don’t succeed, we have other options,” Muttaqi said.
Pakistan condemns attack
Before the Afghan claim of casualties, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned the assault and said the country’s army “not only gave a befitting reply to Afghanistan’s provocations but also destroyed several of their posts, forcing them to retreat.”
Pakistani security officials shared videos purporting to show destroyed Afghan checkpoints, but the footage could not be independently verified because the media does not have access to these areas.
The Pakistani army said more than 200 “Taliban and affiliated terrorists have been neutralized, while the number of injured is much higher.”
According to Pakistani security officials, Afghan forces opened fire in several northwestern border areas in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
One official in Islamabad told The Associated Press that Pakistan had taken control of 19 Afghan border posts from where attacks were being launched. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
“The Taliban personnel at these posts have either been killed or fled. Fires and visible destruction have been observed at the captured Afghan posts,” the official added.
The two countries share a 2,611-kilometer (1,622-mile) border known as the Durand Line, but Afghanistan has never recognized it.
Associated Press writers Sajjad Tarakzai in Islamabad, Abdul Qahar Afghan in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, Jon Gambrell in Cairo, and Rajesh Roy in New Delhi contributed to this report.
Afghanistan says it has killed 58 Pakistani soldiers in overnight border operations
Isolated confrontations have intensified over the past week into the sharpest escalation of violence between the two countries in years.
Tensions along the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan surged on Sunday after a deadly overnight clash between the countries’ militaries, with both sides exchanging heavy fire in one of the sharpest escalations of violence between the neighbors in years.
Afghan officials said on Sunday that their security forces had targeted Pakistani military outposts along the border in what they described as “retaliatory operations,” following what Kabul said were Pakistani airstrikes in Afghanistan last week. At least 23 Pakistani soldiers were killed and 29 others were injured on Saturday, according to Pakistan’s military. The Taliban government said nine Afghan soldiers had died and at least 16 others had been injured.
The overnight fighting raised concerns that the violence could spill into a broader conflict between the two countries, whose governments have gradually grown hostile to each other since the Taliban reclaimed power in Afghanistan in 2021.
Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban government’s chief spokesman, told reporters on Sunday that the fighting had stopped at midnight after Qatar and Saudi Arabia urged restraint. He warned Pakistan that any violation of Afghanistan’s sovereignty would prompt retaliation.
The Afghan attack overnight included heavy fire and raids within Pakistan, the Pakistani military said in a statement on Sunday. It said it responded with heavy artillery, airstrikes and raids within Afghanistan. Both sides also claimed dozens of victims, but none of their claims could be independently verified because access to the border region remains severely restricted.
The Afghan offensive was a response to attacks on Wednesday in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, and at a market near the border, which the Taliban government blamed on Pakistan.
Pakistan said on Friday that it had conducted “a series of retribution operations” against Pakistani militants, but it did not mention Afghanistan directly. Nor did Pakistan claim responsibility for the explosions on Thursday in Kabul and at the border market.
Without addressing the specifics of the most recent violence, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan on Sunday praised his country’s armed forces for what he described as a “strong and effective response” to recent Afghan provocations along the border, saying the military had “destroyed several of their border posts, forcing a retreat.”
The militaries of both nations have frequently clashed along their shared border, a nearly 1,600-mile-long line that snakes along mountainous areas.
Pakistan has repeatedly accused the Taliban government of providing a haven to the banned group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, also known as the T.T.P. or Pakistani Taliban, whose attacks have killed hundreds of Pakistani security forces in recent years. It has also accused its archnemesis, India, of supporting the T.T.P.
The T.T.P. leadership has received financial support from the Afghan government, and its militants have trained freely in Afghanistan, according to Pakistani military officials and independent and United Nations experts. The Taliban in Afghanistan deny backing the Pakistani group.
The Afghan and Pakistani governments have tried to mend the relationship in recent years, despite sporadic clashes and ongoing points of diplomatic tension. The countries’ top diplomats met in August with their Chinese counterpart, but Pakistan has not recognized the Taliban as Afghanistan’s legitimate authority.
Still, there are close ties between both nations. Pakistan is Afghanistan’s top export partner, and it hosts millions of Afghans who fled insecurity and unemployment over the past decades.
Major border crossings between the two countries have been closed since the overnight clashes, according to Pakistani and Afghan officials. In recent months, tens of thousands of Afghans living in Pakistan have crossed back into Afghanistan amid a wave of expulsions ordered by the Pakistani government.
The clash on Saturday only lasted for a few hours, possibly because both countries may be wary of escalating tensions further, said Adam Weinstein, a Afghanistan and Pakistan analyst at the Quincy Institute, a research center in Washington.
“Pakistan doesn’t yet want to engage in some kind of regime change, but the Taliban know that they would be outgunned by the Pakistanis if they pushed the fighting further,” Mr. Weinstein said.
Pakistan can carry out airstrikes across most of Afghanistan, but the Taliban are more limited to cross-border artillery and the potential use of the T.T.P. militants to add pressure inside Pakistan, he added.
On Saturday, the T.T.P. claimed responsibility for a series of attacks across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a Pakistani province bordering Afghanistan, that killed several security personnel and civilians, including in a bombing near a police training facility.
Residents in border districts on both sides said in telephone interviews that they witnessed intense overnight clashes that raged for several hours.
“The fighting went on for hours without pause,” said Shabbir Khan, a resident of Kurram, a Pakistani border district, describing the sound of heavy weapons echoing through the mountains.
Aziz Sayar, a resident of the Sawkai district in Afghanistan’s Kunar Province, near the border of Pakistan, said the gunfire began around 9 p.m. and continued for over three hours.
“Our children screamed in fear as bullets echoed through the night,” he said.
Mujib Mashal contributed reporting.
Elian Peltier is an international correspondent for The Times, covering Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Border Clash Between Afghanistan and Pakistan Threatens a Wider Conflict
The United Nations says aid workers are still in a “race against time” to remove rubble and rebuild after the devastating earthquake struck eastern Afghanistan last month, killing at least 2,200 people and cutting off remote areas.
The 6.0-magnitude quake on Aug. 31 was shallow, destroying or causing extensive damage to low-rise buildings in the mountainous region. It hit late at night, and homes — mostly made of mud, wood, or rocks — collapsed instantly, becoming death traps.
Satellite data shows that about 40,500 truckloads of debris still needs to be cleared from affected areas in several provinces, the United Nations Development Program said Wednesday. Entire communities have been upended and families are sleeping in the open, it added.
The quake’s epicenter was in remote and rugged Kunar province, challenging rescue and relief efforts by the Taliban government and humanitarian groups. Authorities deployed helicopters or airdropped army commandos to evacuate survivors. Aid workers walked for hours on foot to reach isolated communities.
“This is a race against time,” said Devanand Ramiah, from the UNDP’s Crisis Bureau. “Debris removal and reconstruction operations must start safely and swiftly.”
People’s main demands were the reconstruction of houses and water supplies, according to a spokesman for a Taliban government committee tasked with helping survivors, Zia ur Rahman Speenghar.
People were getting assistance in cash, food, tents, beds, and other necessities, Speenghar said Thursday. Three new roads were under construction in the Dewagal Valley, and roads would be built to areas where there previously were none.
“Various countries and organizations have offered assistance in the construction of houses but that takes time. After the second round of assistance, work will begin on the third round, which is considering what kind of houses can be built here,” the spokesman said.
Afghanistan is facing a “perfect storm” of crises, including natural disasters like the recent earthquake, said Roza Otunbayeva, who leads the U.N. mission to the country.
Afghanistan Peace Campaign