The Kabul Airstrikes: Unpacking a Cross-Border Clash

Introduction: More Than Just an Explosion

Explosions rocked Kabul on the night of October 9, 2025, in what were widely reported as Pakistani airstrikes targeting the leader of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Noor Wali Mehsud, in the heart of the Afghan capital. While the TTP has since released an unverified audio recording of Mehsud claiming he survived, the attack represents a significant escalation in the simmering conflict between the two nations.

While the explosions and their high-value target captured headlines, the real story isn't about a single cross-border operation. This incident is a violent symptom of a much deeper, multifaceted crisis brewing in the region. Pakistan is not simply fighting militants; it is fighting for its own legitimacy against forces that are more sophisticated, adaptive, and interconnected than ever before.

To truly understand the gravity of the situation, one must look beyond the immediate event. The conflict between Pakistan and an array of militant groups is being reshaped by surprising new forces: a sophisticated propaganda war, the strategic fallout from the Afghan Taliban’s return to power, the emergence of unexpected alliances between ideological enemies, and a high-stakes diplomatic gambit playing out between Kabul, New Delhi, and an increasingly isolated Islamabad.

1. From War on Terror to Crisis of Legitimacy

Pakistan’s primary challenge is not tactical, but a fundamental crisis of state legitimacy. After two decades as a key partner in the global "war on terror," the country now confronts a resilient militant landscape that is deeply intertwined with what can be described as a multidimensional legitimacy crisis. Military gains are consistently undermined by deeper, systemic issues that fuel the very violence the state seeks to suppress.

This crisis is unfolding across three interconnected fronts:

1. Narrative Warfare: Militant groups are proving highly effective at challenging the state’s official story and credibility. They are winning the battle for hearts and minds by transforming local grievances into compelling anti-state claims.
2. Governance Gaps: Endemic political infighting, severe economic hardship, and repressive state actions are creating the very conditions that militants exploit. This dysfunction is not abstract; it manifests in a fractured counterterrorism approach, where federal authorities and the provincial government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa openly clash on strategy. It is visible in the breakdown of traditional conflict resolution, with state-backed military operations overriding local peace jirgas (tribal councils). Furthermore, the state’s crackdown on peaceful movements protesting issues like enforced disappearances provides a steady stream of grievances for extremist groups to leverage for recruitment and propaganda.
3. Regional Isolation: Hostile borders with Afghanistan and India do more than just provide physical sanctuary for militants. They also offer external validation for the groups' anti-state messaging, feeding into a perception that Pakistan is strategically encircled. This isolation has been thrown into sharp relief by the timing of the October 9th airstrikes, which occurred as the Afghan Taliban's foreign minister was in New Delhi for a landmark visit—a diplomatic outreach that Islamabad views as a direct strategic threat.

These elements create a dangerous feedback loop where military action alone is insufficient. As a recent security analysis from the Hudson Institute notes, the cycle is self-perpetuating:

"Militant tactical successes validate anti-state messaging, while state excesses and hardline approaches generate new grievances, with each element strengthening the other."

2. Militants Turn Conflict into a PR War

Far from being unsophisticated insurgents, key militant groups in the region have become savvy media operators, developing potent narrative strategies that act as a "force multiplier" for their kinetic operations.

Groups like the TTP, the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), and the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) are waging a surprisingly modern and effective propaganda war.

1. Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP): The TTP has professionalized its outreach through its Umar Media wing, which produces high-quality audio and video content. It has strategically shifted its messaging to embrace Pashtun nationalism, framing its fighters as "sons of the soil" defending tribal honor against a "colonial" army. In a sign of its modern approach, the TTP now uses AI-generated news bulletins in multiple languages, including Sindhi, Punjabi, and Balochi, to broaden its appeal.
2. Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA): The ethno-nationalist BLA portrays the Pakistani state as an exploitative "colonial entity," fighting against what it calls Punjabi domination and Chinese resource extraction. Its propaganda is designed for a younger, educated audience, featuring tribute videos with popular music that showcase recruits from prestigious universities as "socially conscious revolutionaries."
3. Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP): Operating with a global vision, ISKP's Al-Azaim Foundation produces content in over a dozen languages. Its propaganda masterfully links local Pakistani grievances—such as economic hardship or political repression—to a global jihad, framing "apostate" local governments as puppets of the West. This strategy gives recruits a transnational identity and a sense of divine purpose.

A striking trend across these ideologically opposed groups is their intensifying outreach to women. The BLA’s Majeed Brigade has introduced female suicide bombers, framing them as symbols of collective sacrifice. The TTP, meanwhile, has created specialized recruitment materials positioning women as "guardians of jihad," demonstrating a sophisticated understanding of audience segmentation.

3. Taliban’s Win, Pakistan’s Nightmare

The Afghan Taliban’s return to power in August 2021 was widely expected to be a strategic victory for Pakistan, which had served as the group's long-standing patron. The reality has been the exact opposite. Instead of gaining "strategic depth" on its western border, Pakistan has inherited a security nightmare.

The relationship between Islamabad and Kabul has deteriorated significantly. Pakistan accuses the Taliban government of providing a safe haven for the TTP, which uses Afghan soil to plan and launch attacks that have drastically increased since 2021. The Taliban government, for its part, has proven either "unable or unwilling" to crack down on its ideological allies in the TTP.

This reluctance stems from the deep historical and tribal bonds connecting the two groups. The TTP fought alongside the Afghan Taliban for two decades against US and Afghan government forces, creating a powerful sense of shared history and purpose that the current Taliban government in Kabul is hesitant to betray. As the UN Monitoring Team noted:

"The [Afghan] Taliban do not conceive of TTP as a terrorist group: the bonds are close, and the debt owed to TTP significant."

4. Common Enemies, Unlikely Allies

The most surprising development in Pakistan's security landscape is the emergence of tactical alliances between militant groups with deeply conflicting ideologies. Driven by their shared opposition to the Pakistani state, these groups are forming accommodations and even learning from one another.

The TTP is expanding its operations beyond its traditional Pashtun strongholds and making significant inroads into Balochistan province. This has led to an emerging relationship between the TTP, a Sunni Islamist organization, and the BLA, an ethno-nationalist separatist movement. Despite their profound ideological differences, the BLA appears to have tacitly accepted the TTP's presence in the province, creating a united front against their common enemy. This tolerance is likely a calculated strategy: the BLA avoids weakening itself by opening a new front, while gaining a de facto ally against both the Pakistani state and the rival Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP).

To bolster this budding alliance, the TTP has actively expressed support for Baloch grievances, such as the protests against "enforced disappearances," in a clear effort to make common cause. This operational proximity may also be leading to a transfer of tactics. The BLA has recently adopted suicide attacks, a method it may have learned from the TTP during their time coexisting in Afghanistan.

Conclusion: A Cycle of Violence?

The October 2025 airstrikes in Kabul are a kinetic response to a problem that is not fundamentally military. Pakistan's reliance on "hard-power solutions" does little to address the underlying crisis of legitimacy that fuels militancy. Each military strike may disrupt a network, but it cannot dismantle the powerful narratives, correct the governance failures, or repair the regional isolation that allows these groups to reconstitute, recruit, and expand their influence.

Pakistan is trapped in a cycle where its actions risk exacerbating the very problems they are intended to solve. State excesses generate new grievances, which in turn validate the militants' anti-state messaging and draw in a new generation of recruits. This leaves a final, critical question: As Pakistan doubles down on military force to solve a crisis of trust—at the very moment its adversaries and neighbors deepen their own diplomatic ties—will its actions finally break the cycle of violence, or will they only fuel the grievances that create the next generation of militants?