Afghanistan: Why the land that outlasted empires is now Pakistan’s strategic nightmare

Pakistan’s airstrikes on Afghanistan and Khawaja Asif’s “open war” warning mark a sharp escalation in tensions driven by TTP sanctuaries and Taliban inaction. The crisis reflects Afghanistan’s long history of resisting outside force, shaped by geography, tribal power, and decades of proxy warfare.

The bombs fell on Kabul and Kandahar before dawn. Within hours, the language turned unmistakable. “Our patience has reached its limit. Now it is an open war between you and us,” Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif declared after fresh strikes on Afghan territory on 27 February. The escalation followed days of mounting tension. On 21 February, Pakistan launched air raids in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar, Paktika and Khost provinces, saying it had targeted seven militant camps linked to Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP). United Nations monitors reported that 13 civilians were killed, including women and children.

Afghan forces later struck Pakistani border posts. Kabul insists its sovereignty is “non-negotiable” and rejects outside dictates. What has emerged is not a sudden crisis but the latest chapter in a long, brutal pattern: outsiders trying to bend Afghanistan to their will and failing.

Why Afghanistan resists control

Afghanistan is not simply a state; it is terrain made hostile by design. The Hindu Kush mountain range splits the country into isolated valleys, turning every advance into a logistical gamble.

Armies can seize cities. They struggle to hold the countryside. Supply lines stretch thin through narrow passes. Convoys move under constant threat from ridgelines that favour defenders who know every track and gorge.

This geography has shaped history for centuries.

A few kilometres from modern Islamabad lies Attock, built around the Atak-Banaras fort, constructed by the Mughal emperor Akbar. He regarded the Indus at “Atak”, meaning barrier, as the practical western limit of his empire. Beyond it lay territory that was costly to subdue and harder still to keep.

Long before modern borders, invaders from the northwest crossed mountain passes into the Indian subcontinent. When pursued, they withdrew into the Afghan highlands that swallowed armies whole.

The list of failed conquerors

The pattern is striking.

Alexander the Great pushed through Persia into the Indus basin, yet spent years entangled in fierce resistance in what is now Afghanistan, fighting Bactrian insurgents and marrying Roxana to secure fragile alliances.

The British Empire, at the height of its power, fought three Anglo-Afghan wars. The first ended in disaster in 1842, when retreating British troops were nearly annihilated outside Kabul. In time, London accepted that the Hindu Kush marked the outer edge of imperial reach.

In 1979, the Soviet Union sent in around 100,000 troops. For a decade, one of the world’s most formidable armies held cities but failed to pacify the countryside. Soviet forces withdrew in 1989, exhausted and demoralised.

After the attacks of 11 September 2001, the United States and NATO entered Afghanistan in what became America’s longest war. Twenty years, vast sums of money and immense firepower later, Western forces left in 2021. The Taliban returned to power.

Each campaign began with confidence. Each ended with a departure.

The structure of resistance

Afghanistan’s social fabric compounds its geographic advantage. Power has historically rested not in a strong central state but among tribes and local leaders. Decisions of national importance have often been channelled through a Loya Jirga, a grand assembly of elders.

For an external power, that means there is no single centre of gravity to destroy. Eliminating one faction rarely ends resistance; it shifts it elsewhere. Control must be negotiated valley by valley, tribe by tribe.

The country’s position at the junction of Central Asia, South Asia and the Middle East has also made it a theatre for proxy struggles. During the 19th-century “Great Game”, British and Russian interests clashed across Afghan territory. In the 1980s, the United States, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan armed the Mujahideen against Soviet forces. Later, Pakistan backed the Taliban as a means of shaping Kabul’s politics and limiting Indian influence.

Afghanistan has rarely stood alone. Someone, somewhere, has usually found it useful to support those resisting the latest occupier.

Faith and war

Religion has repeatedly served as a rallying force. Afghanistan is among the most devout Muslim societies in the region. Foreign intervention is often cast as an assault on Islam.

The British were labelled Christian infidels. The Soviets were denounced as godless communists. The Americans were described as crusaders. Now, Pakistani airstrikes that kill Afghan civilians are portrayed by critics as attacks on Muslim soil, feeding anger that stretches beyond borders.

The weapons that never leave

Afghanistan’s arsenals tell another story. Over centuries, invaders have brought arms, and, when they departed, many of those weapons remained.

The British left rifles. The Soviets left tanks, artillery, helicopters and vast stockpiles of ammunition. When US and NATO forces withdrew in 2021, they left behind equipment worth billions of dollars, including rifles, Humvees, night-vision systems, artillery pieces and Black Hawk helicopters.

The Taliban did not merely retake power; they inherited a modern military inventory supplied by their former adversaries. It is a familiar cycle: the departing force leaves behind the tools that shape the next conflict.

Pakistan’s dilemma

For Pakistan, the present crisis carries a sharp irony.

From 1994 onwards, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency backed the Taliban’s rise, supplying training, weapons and support. The aim was strategic depth: a friendly government in Kabul that would counter Indian influence.

Today, the Taliban govern Afghanistan. Yet they have proved unwilling, or unable, to dismantle the TTP, which Islamabad regards as a grave internal threat. Pakistani officials believe the Afghan Taliban are reluctant to move decisively against the TTP, partly because of ideological ties and partly for fear that fighters could defect to Islamic State Khorasan Province.

The result is a bitter reversal. Pakistan now bombs territory controlled by a movement it once nurtured. Civilian casualties inflame Pashtun sentiment on both sides of the border. Each strike risks strengthening the very militancy Islamabad seeks to crush.

When Khawaja Asif said, “Now it is an open war between you and us,” he voiced more than immediate anger. He signalled a confrontation shaped by mountains, memory and miscalculation.

Afghanistan has earned its reputation as the “graveyard of empires” not through mystique, but through a blend of terrain, tribal resilience and external meddling. Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state with a powerful military, now faces a hard truth: in Afghanistan, air power alone has rarely bent events to anyone’s will.

History suggests a sobering lesson. Afghans have repeatedly outlasted those who sought to dominate them. Whether this latest conflict follows the same script will depend not only on force, but on whether old patterns can finally be broken.