Pakistan’s Unwinnable War: Outgunned and Defiant, the Taliban Won’t Back Down
Pakistan’s military establishment, accustomed to projecting power across South Asia, now finds itself in an uncomfortable position. The country that boasts the largest army in the Muslim world—6.5 lakh active soldiers, nuclear weapons, and advanced fighter jets—is bleeding along its border with one of the poorest nations on earth. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, Pakistani soldiers are falling to Taliban ambushes and suicide attacks. The mighty Pakistan Armed Forces, still nursing wounds from their recent defeats against India during Operation Sindoor, now face the humiliating prospect of another embarrassment, this time from their western neighbour Afghanistan.
The irony is rich and impossible to ignore. For decades, Pakistan nurtured, trained, and supported the Afghan Taliban, viewing them as strategic assets against India and a means to maintain influence in Kabul. The Pakistani military’s Inter-Services Intelligence practically midwifed the Taliban’s rise to power in the 1990s. Yet today, these same Taliban fighters are killing Pakistani soldiers, and Islamabad finds itself contemplating military action against the very force it helped create. It is a classic case of the weapon turning against its maker, and the Pakistani establishment has no one to blame but itself.
A recent 48-hour ceasefire between Pakistan and the Taliban offered temporary relief from the violence, but it solved nothing. Islamabad claims that fighters from Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, the TTP militants who have declared war on the Pakistani state, are operating freely from Afghan soil with Kabul’s blessing or at least its tolerance. The Afghan Taliban government denies direct support but also refuses to crack down on their Pakistani cousins with the force that Islamabad demands. This delicate dance has brought two neighbours with a long, troubled history to the brink of something neither can truly afford—open war.
Can Afghanistan really face Pakistan’s powerful, nuclear-armed military? On paper, the question answers itself. The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies has compared the military capabilities of both countries, and the results are predictably lopsided. When it comes to military recruitment, training, organization, defence spending, and weapons procurement, Pakistan dominates in every category. The Pakistan Armed Forces include approximately 5.6 lakh army soldiers, 70,000 air force personnel, and 30,000 naval members. The Pakistan Air Force operates around 465 fighter jets and over 260 helicopters. Pakistan’s arsenal includes more than 6,000 armoured vehicles and over 4,600 artillery guns, not to mention its nuclear weapons and increasingly sophisticated drone fleet.
Afghanistan’s Taliban government, by contrast, fields roughly 1.72 lakh active fighters, with plans to expand to 2 lakh personnel. They possess old Soviet-era tanks and a hodgepodge of modern American military equipment captured during the chaotic 2021 withdrawal—Humvees, armoured carriers, and various other vehicles. But here is where the Taliban’s problems begin. Having modern weapons is one thing; knowing how to use them effectively is quite another. The Taliban’s biggest weakness, according to the IISS study, is their lack of technical skill and knowledge to properly operate the sophisticated equipment they inherited. No one knows exactly how many of these captured American vehicles actually work or how many the Taliban can maintain. The number of artillery guns in working condition remains unclear. Most critically, it is unknown whether the Taliban have trained pilots capable of flying the fighter jets and helicopters sitting in Kabul’s hangars.
Pakistan benefits from strong military partnerships with China and Turkey, which supply advanced weapons and technology. Even amid severe financial troubles, Pakistan continues funding its nuclear program and upgrading its navy and air force. The Afghan Taliban, meanwhile, remains internationally isolated. Their government lacks official recognition from any major power, which has effectively blocked them from modernising their military through normal channels. They cannot simply place orders for new fighter jets or missile systems the way Pakistan can.
The military imbalance becomes even starker when considering air power. Afghanistan has virtually no defence against Pakistani airstrikes. If Pakistan decides to launch aerial bombardments, the Taliban would be helpless to stop them. Pakistani jets could strike targets across Afghanistan with minimal risk of retaliation. This gives Islamabad overwhelming tactical advantage in any potential conflict.
Beyond raw military power, Afghanistan faces crippling economic and strategic constraints that make war with Pakistan nearly impossible. The Taliban government remains a pariah on the international stage. Its attempts to gain UN recognition have failed completely. While Kabul is cautiously building relationships with countries like India and China, there are severe limits to the assistance it could expect if a major war erupted. No country is going to fight Pakistan on Afghanistan’s behalf, and even diplomatic support would be grudging at best.
Afghanistan’s economy, already devastated by decades of war and international sanctions, simply cannot sustain a prolonged military conflict. The country has almost no money for such an endeavor. More importantly, most of Afghanistan’s trade flows through Pakistan. Islamabad can strangle the Afghan economy simply by closing border crossings and blocking supply routes. Afghanistan depends on these trade arteries for survival. From a purely practical standpoint, Afghanistan needs Pakistan more as a trading partner than it can afford Pakistan as an enemy.
Given these overwhelming disadvantages, the logical conclusion seems obvious—Kabul should avoid confrontation with Pakistan at all costs, accommodate Islamabad’s demands regarding TTP militants, and focus on economic survival. Yet the Taliban are not following this logical script, and that fact reveals something important about the nature of their government and their perception of national sovereignty.
The Taliban cannot simply ignore Pakistani military attacks and incursions into Afghan territory, even though they lack the power to effectively counter them. They also cannot fully comply with Pakistan’s demands to suppress the TTP, even though doing so might bring peace. Why? Because the Taliban are trying to establish themselves as a legitimate, independent government with their own foreign policy and decision-making authority. Capitulating completely to Pakistani pressure would undermine their claims to sovereignty and make them look like Pakistani puppets—precisely the accusation that has dogged them since their inception.
There is also the matter of ideological and ethnic solidarity. Many Taliban fighters see the TTP’s struggle against the Pakistani state as legitimate jihad. The groups share similar religious ideology and, in many cases, tribal and family connections. Asking the Afghan Taliban to aggressively suppress their Pakistani brothers is asking them to betray fundamental loyalties. This is not something they can easily do, regardless of the military and economic consequences.
So Afghanistan finds itself in an impossible position. It cannot defeat Pakistan in conventional war. It cannot survive economically without Pakistani cooperation. Yet it also cannot simply submit to Pakistani dictates without destroying its own claims to independence and authority. This paradox defines the current crisis and explains why the situation remains so volatile despite the obvious power imbalance.
Pakistan, for its part, faces its own uncomfortable dilemma. It has the military power to devastate Afghanistan, but what would that actually accomplish? Airstrikes might destroy some TTP camps and kill some militants, but they would also cement Afghan hostility for generations. Pakistan would create more enemies than it eliminates. A ground invasion would be even worse—a nightmare of guerrilla warfare in hostile terrain against an enemy that specializes in asymmetric conflict. The Soviet Union and the United States both learned that lesson at tremendous cost. Does Pakistan really want to be the next empire to bleed itself dry in Afghanistan’s mountains?
Moreover, aggressive Pakistani military action would likely increase sympathy and support for the TTP inside Pakistan’s own Pashtun regions. The Pakistani Taliban could portray themselves as defenders of Afghanistan against foreign aggression, potentially swelling their ranks with new recruits. Pakistan could win every battle and still lose the war by radicalizing its own population.
The current situation resembles a slow-motion car crash where both drivers can see the collision coming but neither can quite figure out how to avoid it. Pakistan has overwhelming military superiority but limited good options for using it effectively. Afghanistan has no real military options at all but also cannot afford to appear weak and submissive. Both sides are trapped by their own histories, ideologies, and domestic political pressures.
The recent ceasefire offers a glimpse of what a solution might look like—temporary de-escalation, quiet negotiations, mutual face-saving gestures, and an agreement to disagree while avoiding open warfare. This is not a satisfying resolution for either side, but it may be the best available option in an unsatisfying situation. Pakistan gets to claim it is defending its borders and pressuring Kabul on terrorism. Afghanistan gets to claim it is resisting foreign interference and maintaining independence. Neither side gets what it really wants, but both avoid the catastrophic consequences of actual war.
The tragedy is that both countries would benefit enormously from peaceful cooperation. Afghanistan desperately needs trade, development assistance, and regional integration to escape poverty and instability. Pakistan needs a stable western border so it can focus resources on economic development and its eastern frontier with India. The two countries should be natural economic partners, with Pakistani goods flowing into Afghanistan and Afghan resources flowing back. Instead, they are locked in a destructive cycle of mutual suspicion and low-intensity conflict that serves neither nation’s interests.
But changing this dynamic requires both sides to overcome deep-seated grievances and distrust built up over decades. Pakistan must accept that it cannot simply dictate terms to Afghanistan anymore, that the Taliban government in Kabul, despite its origins, is not a Pakistani subsidiary. Afghanistan must acknowledge the legitimate security concerns Pakistan has regarding cross-border terrorism, even while maintaining its own sovereignty. Neither concession comes easily.
For now, the most likely outcome is continued tension punctuated by periodic violence, temporary ceasefires, and inconclusive negotiations. Afghanistan will continue to lack the military power to challenge Pakistan directly while refusing to submit completely to Pakistani demands. Pakistan will continue to have overwhelming military superiority without any clear way to translate that superiority into a permanent solution. Both sides will remain locked in a frustrating stalemate where neither can win but neither is willing to genuinely compromise.
The Pakistani military establishment must be experiencing a particular kind of frustration. They spent decades building up the Taliban as a strategic asset, and now that asset has become a liability. The group they nurtured refuses to follow orders. The militants they trained are killing Pakistani soldiers. The government they helped install in Kabul shows more independence than submission. It is a reminder that proxy forces, once unleashed, often develop their own agendas and cannot be controlled as easily as their sponsors imagine.
Afghanistan’s Taliban, meanwhile, are learning the hard realities of governing versus fighting. It is one thing to wage guerrilla war against foreign occupiers with nothing to lose. It is quite another to run a country, manage an economy, maintain international relationships, and defend borders against a much stronger neighbour. The skills that made them effective insurgents do not automatically translate into effective governance, and their ideological rigidity often conflicts with the pragmatic compromises that successful statecraft requires.
So we are left with David facing Goliath, except David lacks even a slingshot, and Goliath is too afraid of international condemnation and domestic backlash to use his full strength. Neither can truly defeat the other, yet neither can walk away. The border will continue to bleed, soldiers on both sides will continue to die, and the leadership in both Islamabad and Kabul will continue searching for solutions that likely do not exist. It is not a war that either side can win, but it may be a conflict that neither side knows how to end. And in that tragic uncertainty lies the future of Pakistan-Afghanistan relations—forever hostile, forever entangled, forever unable to break free from the poisonous history that binds them together.
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