DR. SAHIBZADA MUHAMMAD USMAN
The Pak-Afghan frontier, stretches approximately, is roughly 2,600 kilometres long. What used to be a problem of smugglers, informal crossings, and militant movement is now being pulled into a harder security era. In late February 2026, Pakistan and the Taliban led authorities in Kabul slid into their most serious fighting in years, with air strikes, drones and heavy exchanges along the border. That escalation matters because it shows a shift: border management is no longer only about gates and posts, it is also about deterrence and stopping armed groups that exploit weak coordination.
Pakistan’s core argument is that instability on the Afghan side spills into Pakistan through militant networks, not through ordinary families. Islamabad has repeatedly accused the Taliban authorities of tolerating or enabling armed groups that attack Pakistan, especially Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. Pakistan also blames Afghan soil for harbouring Baloch separatists. It points to cross border planning and logistics as the driver of violence. A United Nations sanctions monitoring assessment, reported by VOA, described the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan as the largest terrorist group inAfghanistan and said the group receives growing support from Taliban rulers for cross border attacks in Pakistan. Whether you accept every detail or not, the strategic issue is clear: if armed actors can regroup with limited pressure on one side of the line, the other side will keep absorbing the shock.
This is where Pakistan’s border management choices matter. Pakistan has treated the western border as a national security project, investing in physical barriers and force posture. Military briefings put the fencing at about 94 percent complete by early 2022, alongside hundreds of new forts and check posts. Other reporting later cited claims of around 98 percent fencing completion. The exact figure will be debated, but the trend is not: Pakistan tried to narrow illegal movement into fewer routes where monitoring and interdiction are easier.
Afghanistan’s de facto authorities have often treated these measures as illegitimate, and that has practical consequences. Border disputes have triggered closures and clashes, sometimes over the building of posts and enforcement of the line. In early 2025, the Torkham crossing shut for nearly a month after fightinglinked to a dispute over a border outpost, then reopened in March. Reuters also reported closures in October 2025 after exchanges of fire, with Pakistan alleging militant threats and Kabul rejecting the accusation. When border management becomes a political contest instead of a shared routine, every local incident risks turning into a national crisis.
The security paradigm is shifting because the tools of conflict are changing. The February 2026 escalation included claims of cross border drone strikes, with Afghanistan saying it used drones to hit targets in Pakistan, and Pakistan saying its counter drone measures prevented damage. Drones compress decision time and make escalation harder to control. In the same period, Reuters reported that Pakistan launched air strikes on militant targets in Afghanistan with Pakistani sources claiming at least 70 militants were killed while the United Nations said at least 13 civilians died.
Inside Pakistan, the numbers show why Islamabad sees the western border as an urgent national security file. In 2024, PIPS reported 521 terrorist attacks and 852 deaths, with most attacks concentrated in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. The same PIPS reporting was summarised as showing heavy tolls from both Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and the Balochistan Liberation Army. PICSS, using its own methodology, recorded 908 militant attacks in 2024, which shows how counting rules change totals but not the direction of the trend. At the global level, the Global Terrorism Index 2025 noted that deaths attributed to the four major groups, including Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, rose 11 percent in 2024. In that environment, patience for excuses runs out quickly.
Pakistan’s gains are not only about fencing. Operational pressure has been sustained, and the results show in metrics even when overall violence remains high. PICSS reported 296 security force operations in 2024 and said these actions were more lethal, with 950 militant deaths reported in its annual totals, while suicide attacks fell to 17 incidents. CRSS reporting on late 2025 also noted declines in attacks in Novermber and December, including an almost 17 percent drop in December. Sustained pressure shrinks militant space, but it works best when the border is not a revolving door. Any serious view of the Pak Afghan border also must include people, especially Afghans living in Pakistan. UNHCR says that at the beginning of 2025 Pakistan hosted about 1.6 million Afghan refugees and asylum seekers, alongside more than 1.5 million Afghans with other legal statuses. UNHCR also reported that 8,954 Afghans were deported in 2024 despite advocacy against forced returns, showing how fast security policies can spill into humanitarian pain. Trade and transit are part of this human picture too: Reuters cited Pakistan’s foreign office saying bilateral trade exceeded 1.6 billion dollars in 2024, and a World Bank cited report noted Pakistan was the destination for 45 percent of Afghanistan’s exports in 2024. The Afghan diaspora can help calm tensions by stressing shared livelihoods and by pushing back on rumours that inflame communities.
My view is that Pakistan has done serious work to turn a porous frontier into a more governed space. But a fence is not a peace plan. Without parallel action on the Afghan side, barriers push pressure to the next gap, and armed groups adapt. Kabul needs to move from denial to enforcement: credible action against cross border militant infrastructure, routine border coordination, and stable rules for trade and movement. Both sides can still choose restraint today. Pakistan should pair security with legal trade and dignified mobility because long term stability needs more than force.
