Pakistan must not wage any more war with Afghanistan

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.