Pakistan must not go back to its war with Afghanistan. Pakistan and Afghanistan have a 46 year long history of conflict since the Soviet invasion of Kabul in 1979 and they went to war this month. The two countries then had a ceasefire over the Eid holiday.
There are people trying to set this ceasefire aflame.
Pakistan needs to maintain its ceasefire with Afghanistan
and not break it. This certainly is not the time to pointlessly expend military
or air force on a stupid regime next door that lacks even air defences. At this
stage, keeping your powder dry, has never been a more sensible path to take.
Iran next door is being bombed by America and Israel and Iran can only hit back
at Israel, and the conflict is cracking the economy for everyone everywhere. At
a time like this, a sudden military adventure into Afghanistan would seem like
the most stupid strategic move and one that we would be foolish to resume.
Frankly, the Pakistan Army was being considered an Israeli
stooge for pushing an attack on Afghanistan while both countries powerful
neighbour Iran was coming under joint US-Israeli attack. What really
disappointed me was that the Pakistan Army could not go even nine months
without going to war. Nine months after the May 2025 India-Pakistan war,
Pakistan was fighting Afghanistan. This felt embarrassing, like a real failure
in statecraft.
Since Pakistan stopped the bombing during Eid and has tried
to act as peacemaker between Iran and America, the country's reputation has
skyrocketed. The best thing to do would be to keep it up and a way to do that
is to not violate the international borders of another country by attacking
Afghanistan. It is one thing to have suffered and put up with the depredations
of the Pakistan Army and military inside Pakistan for most of this millennium.
It is adding insult and reputational damage to this country and its citizens
for Pakistan’s military to violate the national sovereignty of another country
(whatever condition it may be in) and bomb another neighbour of ours. Pakistan
needs to keep its reputation together, because God knows when we might need the
political capital soon, and maintain our ceasefire and not bomb or attack
Afghanistan. Sorry if I’m really repeating myself, but in 2026 people are
really dumb and cruel and act like they either don’t know anything or are actively
ignoring something.
Pakistan embarrassed themselves after they bombed too large
of a civilian target two weeks ago (a drug rehabilitation centre) and this
country doesn’t need more controversy than it has already accumulated. The Pakistan Army pushed for the attack on
Afghanistan and the Pakistan Air Force tarnished its reputation with too large
of a civilian casualty on the drug rehabilitation centre that was hit. Pakistan
needs to get out of this international conflict while it has an easy chance
because the country and its military need to not be involved in more crimes.
Political capital will also be wasted defending the Pakistan military if we are
involved in a foolish war of choice in Afghanistan. The military also failed to
take the chance it had in fighting during Ramzaan to surgically target
Pakistani Taliban leaders via commandos and air strikes, a more rational way to
fight a terrorist organisation than the massed military campaign we saw
pursued. It’s better to focus on more covert or diplomatic ways of dealing with
cross-border terrorism, not “Open war” against Afghanistan, as we were quoted
the day before Iran was hit by Israel and America.
 |
| Locations of Pakistan-Afghan Taliban firefights and aerial bombing by Pakistan. Source: Al Jazeera. |
I have also considered this question: Is the Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif and the army chief Asim Munir being fooled by Donald Trump, the American president? Here is an even more serious question: Asim Munir and Shehbaz Sharif are men who have caused the deaths of other human beings, mostly their fellow Pakistanis - so are they being fooled by Donald Trump on behalf of gold star strategic liability and global pariah extraordinaire: Israel?
The Israeli government lies every time it opens its mouth so
disregarding it’s opinion is the most sensible path anyone can take. Their
genocide in Gaza has reduced them to a mass murdering mafia with nuclear
weapons. Nobody respects their government or the IDF. The problem is that for
America, and this White House, you have to read it as Israel. Meanwhile, Prime
Minister Shehbaz Sharif and the Army Chief Asim Munir still love cozying up to
the White House. They mutually fellate each other’s egos and it is a disgusting
sight to behold. However, in this process of these insecure men pumping up each
other’s ego they could be believing their own bullshit and Israel could be
passing it’s plans along for Pakistan through the White House, or at least
telling our government that its stupid ideas are genius moves the US will
support. A stupid idea Pakistan recently had that I can think of, is attacking
Afghanistan. For Israel and this White House, it could have worked, to have one
Muslim country, Pakistan, attacking another Muslim country, Afghanistan, while
America and Israel bomb the neighbour of both countries, Iran. This makes the
region more chaotic during an unpopular military operation those two are
conducting and decreases Pakistan’s political and diplomatic standing to run
any interference on behalf of Iran – which it now is, with Islamabad’s hectic
diplomacy on Tehran’s behalf. All of these are good enough reasons to not have
the Pakistan Army or Air Force bombing Afghanistan again.
There are also the issues of the Pakistan Army and its
behaviour. For all their self-congratulatory talk, the Pakistan Army is bad at
strategy and are idiots with guns. Asim Munir has beaten down an internal schism
in the officer corps of the army against pro-Imran Khan Pakistan Army officers.
Created a schism in a nuclear armed-army for Imran Khan is the definition of stupidity,
but it is not discussed online or in the now very controlled Pakistani
electronic media, but it is well known on the ground in Pakistan that this
happened (I will discuss this later, but if you want to go down this path just
start with the arrest of ex-ISI chief General Faiz and keep going) and the
existence of this, uh, “conspiracy” to create a new Imran Khan hybrid regime
should be enough to convince you of the amount of stupidity circulating in the
Pakistan Army. The problem is, that these dumbasses have power in this country.
My larger point is, we cannot discount the Pakistan Army and its religious greaser
of an Army Chief from doing something particularly stupid or being enticed or
asked to do something dumb and they must be restrained by any force from doing
so.
One thing that might put the brakes on Pakistan Army stupidity is that its restraint makes it look good to the public during the current Iran war. Bombing Afghanistan was part of the Pakistan Army trying to recover its opinion among the public, and this fascist route needs/or has been abandoned due to regional circumstances. China’s pressure and opinion might also have helped, as they would not be fans of more chaos while their rival the United States are acting completely mad. But this leadership we have with Asim Munir has slipped any serious Chinese control, in my opinion. The level of autonomy demonstrates no effective Chinese veto except for Beijing’s opinion.
Immediate Mercy for Refugees
One of the things I want to talk about the most is refugees.
I have not spoken much about this because there is cruelly, monstrously not
only no money in it (and money is taken away from this issue and at times
people who talk about it) but also governments, I must insist on this fact: governments, do not want to talk about
refugees and for the last three years have been going insanely against
refugees. The world has turned against refugees since the ISIS wars of 2014 and
2015. I have really wanted to talk about this topic because it doesn’t just
break my heart, it shatters it; that things have been bad, like really, really,
really bad for refugees for the last twelve years and they have now just gotten
spectacularly worse since 2023. I believe that Pakistan’s anti-refugee turn against
Afghan refugees along with that of Azerbaijan when it took the part of Armenia that
was disputed, Nagorno-Karabakh, and then displaced Armenian people from there
was coordinated/copied from them. Then 7 October 2023 happened and everything
went to complete hell in the middle east and here we are.
Now the Israeli regime has conducted a genocide along with
invading Lebanon and survivors have been reduced to internal or external
refugees. One out of every five Lebanese has been driven out of their homes by
the demons in the IDF. This war in Iran is turning Iranians internally into
refugees in their own country.
For their sake this war has to stop. Simultaneously, Pakistan
must not restart its war inside Afghanistan because it will create more
refugees inside that country. Pakistan must also stop forcing refugees out of
this country in lieu of an effective counter-terrorist strategy. I know for a
fact that there are vultures in Pakistan’s police, in the bureaucracy and among
some of the neighbours who are fantasising about the bank accounts, the
property, the land, the businesses and the small middle class quantities of
middle class wealth that these Afghan refugees have accumulated over their
lives and want to rush and take it over. This is ethnic cleansing masquerading
as counter-terrorism. Just off the top of my head, I can tell you, any child
born in Pakistan, this country created amidst the largest refugee crisis at the
time of independence in 1947, is a Pakistani citizen. It doesn’t matter who
their parent was, their kid gets to stay. I know what the factotums in the
Pakistan government are up to and it’s all about the money they can stack up.
I also want to send this message to anyone from the Pakistan
government: Ethnic cleansing is no substitute for a counter-terrorism strategy
because I know you’re idiots and you don’t know what you are doing. Your racist
garbage will bite you in your waddling ass when you’ve slandered the Afghans
and the next terrorist attack happens. Everyone can then look at how much money
you’ve looted and use that as an excuse to fire your incompetent discriminatory
asses.
Stop persecuting refugees.
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