Taliban Claims Cross-Border Strikes on ISKP in Pakistan

The Jamestown Foundation | Barakwal Myakhel

The Taliban regime’s Defense Ministry claimed on June 19 that its forces “targeted and struck hard” at Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP) centres in Pakistan’s Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces. If confirmed, it would be the first publicly claimed Taliban cross-border strike against ISKP targets in Pakistan since the May ceasefire, though Pakistan dismissed it as propaganda.

Mutual accusations had already fuelled military escalation, with Pakistan conducting airstrikes inside Afghanistan since at least October 2025. The Taliban offered no evidence. Pakistan’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting called the claim “fake and nefarious” and said ISKP and more than “two dozen” other militant groups operate from Afghanistan. Pakistani strikes on June 28 killed at least 28 civilians and injured 49, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). Barakwal Myakhel judges that without credible intelligence sharing and border de-escalation, tensions are likely to persist and ISKP may exploit ungoverned spaces.

Comment

Sanctuary accusations recur between Kabul and Islamabad, and each side rejects the other’s account. The Durand Line dates to 1893, when British India and Amir Abdur Rahman Khan signed it. Kabul has never formally accepted it as an international border, so the two sides share no agreed baseline for judging who crossed it. The Taliban’s June 19 claim of strikes in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa came without evidence.

The earlier round of this argument ran the other way. From 2001 to 2021, Afghan and US officials accused Pakistan of sheltering the Taliban leadership at Quetta, a charge Islamabad rejected. That round closed in 2021 with the Taliban’s return to Kabul, and no agreed account of who had sheltered whom. Pakistan’s demand for “verifiable commitments” from the Afghan side revisits the Quetta-era problem of assurances that are hard to inspect from outside.

Both capitals already justify force as defence against sanctuary. Pakistan’s military says its strikes target militant hideouts in self-defence, while the Taliban Defense Ministry points to “certain hostile intelligence circles”. Without a recognised Durand Line, Pakistan’s June 28 strikes in Afghanistan could read as self-defence in Islamabad and as aggression in Kabul.

Strategic Question for Discussion

What happens to Pakistan’s demand for “verifiable commitments” if the Durand Line stays contested and neither side accepts the other’s evidence on ISKP?

My assessment is that the demand would stay unmet and the dispute would be settled by events rather than by evidence. The Quetta-era record suggests as much, since that dispute ended through a change on the ground in 2021 rather than through agreed proof. Pakistan’s strikes of June 10 and June 28 point the same way, as each produced competing accounts of who was killed.

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