After a month of calm, Pakistan carried out a fresh round of airstrikes across Afghanistan last week, killing at least 13 civilians and injuring 10 others, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).
Pakistan confirmed the strikes, saying it targeted militant hideouts and killed 26 fighters associated with Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). At this time, there is no independent analysis that confirms Pakistan’s claims.
This is not the first time Islamabad has claimed that its bombs were aimed at the TTP, while offering no evidence. In March, Pakistani strikes hit the Omid drug rehabilitation center in Kabul, where, according to the United Nations, at least 143 people were killed. But these attacks have drawn little condemnation or even attention from the international community, including the United States, which has developed close ties with Pakistan during President Donald Trump’s second term.
Haji Hafizullah, a local man from Khost province who, after the airstrikes, spent the night with his son and other villagers pulling bodies from the rubble.
“One of the families lost seven children,” he told RS. “They were between 3 and 15 years old. A woman and a man from the same family were also killed. They were all sleeping. They had no link to any group. They were not fighters. They were poor people, simple people.”
In regard to Islamabad’s claim that the target was the TTP, RS also spoke with Esmatullah, who lives in Khost. He had returned from the funeral only an hour before the interview.
“Pakistan says it is fighting terrorists, then why did we bury children today? If these children were terrorists, show us their guns. Show us their crime. Their only crime was that they were Afghan, poor, and sleeping near a border Pakistan thinks it can bomb whenever it wants,” Esmatullah said.
This is the question, according to Esmatullah, that the international community should ask Pakistan.
So far, as of the date of writing this piece, no country has seriously condemned this latest attack. Some will try to bury these strikes under the excuse that the Taliban are not legitimate. Indeed, there is no doubt that the Taliban are a violent regime holding Afghanistan hostage. They have imposed draconian policies on women and girls, suffocated public life, dismantled basic freedoms, and made everyday survival unbearable for millions of Afghans. No honest Afghan can deny this reality.
Nor can anyone deny the Taliban’s continued links with international terrorist networks and their presence in Afghanistan. According to a December 2025 report by the U.N. Security Council’s Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team, the Taliban’s claim that terrorist groups do not operate from Afghanistan is “not credible,” and the Taliban continues to have ties with Al Qaeda and the TTP.
But the illegitimacy of the Taliban does not mean that the fundamental rights of the people of Afghanistan have been suspended. A state’s frustration with the Taliban or the TTP does not give it the right to punish villagers in Khost, Kunar, or Paktika. It cannot become a license to kill poor families under the guise of fighting terrorism.
Esmatullah said the world must stop treating Afghan deaths as background noise. “We are not asking the world to fight for us; we are asking the world to say the truth. A child and a mother killed in Khost or Paktika is still a child and a mother. If there is truly human rights and if it really means something, it must mean something for Afghan people too.”
For now, the world appears too busy to see the suffering of Afghan civilians. The U.S., which intervened in Afghanistan for decades and shares responsibility for what is happening in the country after its 2021 withdrawal, is too busy elsewhere, including in Iran, Ukraine, and Gaza.
This blind spot could prove consequential. The U.S. has significant leverage over Pakistan; because of its long history of security ties with the country. Between 2002 and 2016, the U.S. supported Pakistan’s military with billions of dollars in military aid. More recently, in 2022, the U.S. approved a $450 million F-16 jet sustainment package for Pakistan, saying it would support Pakistan’s counterterrorism operations and improve its air to ground capability. It has also continued to support Pakistan’s F-16 fighter jets through maintenance and technical assistance.
In 2025, the U.S. approved the sale of a $686 million technology upgrade and equipment package for Pakistan’s F-16 fighter jets, and this year, the U.S. Air Force awarded a $488 million contract to Northrop Grumman for long-term engineering and technical support for F-16 radar systems, with Pakistan among the nations covered in the deal.
There is no public evidence that U.S.-supplied aircraft or munitions were used in the airstrikes Pakistan has carried out, killing hundreds of civilians since the beginning of this year. However, there is a strong possibility that the country has done so, as F-16 jets are among the most valuable defense assets in the Pakistani military’s arsenal.
Washington must use its leverage to pursue accountability, and the U.S. must speak about Afghanistan’s right not to have its children bombed in their homes. Washington should demand that Pakistan provide evidence for its claims, support an independent investigation into civilian deaths, and make clear that counterterrorism cooperation cannot be used as political cover for cross border attacks that kill Afghan civilians.
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