![Afghan men search for victims after a Pakistani air strike hit a residential area in the Girdi Kas village, Nangarhar province on February 22, 2026. [Aimal Zahir/AFP/Getty Images]](https://southasiatimes.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/gettyimages-2262391441.webp "Pakistan’s Cross-Border Strikes and the Evolving Counterterror Doctrine")
An analysis of Pakistan’s cross-border action, security rationale, and regional implications amid rising militant threats.
![Prime Minister Narendra Modi with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar at an official event. [Photo Courtesy: Praveen Jain via The Print].](https://southasiatimes.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/20-scaled-e1755601883425-1024x576-1.webp "The Facade of Indian Strategic Autonomy")
India’s strategic autonomy faces pressure as US trade leverage, energy dependence, and defence ties test New Delhi’s balancing doctrine.
Washington’s new security lens is transactional. Partnerships must pay. For India, sentiment won’t suffice, deliverables will.
UN report warns of rising TTP attacks from Afghanistan and growing regional terror threats, rejecting Taliban claims of eliminating militants.
Analysis of Taliban claims versus UN findings, examining sanctions, militant presence, and Afghanistan’s regional security impact.
Analysis of Balochistan’s security landscape, where militancy exploits socio-economic grievances even as CPEC-driven investments seek stability through infrastructure, education, and connectivity.
Afghanistan’s north fuels cross-border militancy, drone attacks, and drug trafficking, prompting CSTO, CIS & SCO security action.
Repeated cross-border attacks, systematic militant infiltration, organized criminal networks and ideological export from Afghanistan underscore how Taliban rule has transformed the country into a regional epicenter of terrorism, destabilizing neighboring states, threatening regional connectivity, endangering foreign nationals, and posing broader risks to global security.
UNAMA’s October–December 2025 report on cross-border civilian casualties presents a narrowly framed humanitarian narrative that isolates consequences from causes, overlooking the entrenched terrorist infrastructure operating from Afghanistan and its direct role in destabilizing Pakistan.
US support for Pakistan following Balochistan violence reframes the conflict as a global counter-terrorism challenge, not a separatist struggle.