Afghanistan, new raids by the Pakistani Armed Forces against the Taliban

NEW DELHI - A Pakistani government spokesman reported that the military offensive in Afghanistan continued into the night between Friday and Saturday, claiming at least 331 casualties among Taliban forces. According to reports in Islamabad state media on Saturday morning, the Pakistan Air Force was back in action, hitting a number of targets in the eastern provinces of the neighbouring country. The number of Afghans killed in the operations was provided by the Pakistani Information Minister Attaullah Tarar, who added that in two days of fighting, 102 positions and 163 tanks and armoured vehicles of the Taliban army were destroyed.

Tensions between Islamabad and Kabul have been high for months and a previous escalation had been stopped in October thanks to the mediation of Qatar. Then, a week ago, the Pakistani Air Force struck seven targets in two border provinces of Afghanistan, in an attempt to downgrade two extremist formations - Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (Ttp) and Islamic State-Khorasan Province (Iskp) - that it holds responsible for a series of suicide bombings in Islamabad and two border districts.

According to the Islamabad executive, the ruling Taliban in Kabul are doing nothing to prevent Ttp and Iskp militants based in Afghanistan from crossing the border between the two countries to strike at Pakistan, with the aim of destabilising the only Islamic nuclear power, toppling the government and establishing a caliphate.

Despite their contiguity with Ttp, the Taliban in power in Kabul have always rejected the accusations, and on Thursday evening they responded to Pakistani air raids by attacking a series of border posts controlled by the military and paramilitary of Islamabad. It was at that moment that the crisis, which until then had involved a government and non-state actors, took a quantum leap, becoming 'an open war', as defined by the Pakistani Defence Minister.

The conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan pits two very different armed forces against each other. While Afghanistan can count on 172 thousand men and a handful of aircraft, none of which are fighters, Pakistan has more than 600 thousand men, 6 thousand armoured vehicles and 400 combat aircraft.