Whilst most western observers have remained focused on the US-Israeli imperialist war on Iran and its increasing consequences for the global economy, little attention has been paid to another ongoing war that broke out at around the same time (ie, towards the end of February this year)—the war between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
This is a war about which virtually nothing is reported in the British media, despite having given rise already to hundreds of civilian deaths and the displacement of thousands from their homes—on both sides of the border. The Pakistani side has the backing of US imperialism, which is still licking its wounds from having been defeated militarily and driven out of Afghanistan by the Taliban. Most other countries, including China and Russia, are calling for a ceasefire and for peace talks to mediate the causes of conflict between the two sides.
Afghanistan’s war-torn half century
Pakistan and Afghanistan have a few things in common: they are both conservative, near-exclusively muslim nations in central/southern Asia. Arguably, they both also share a somewhat uncalled-for highly negative reputation in Britain. In Afghanistan’s case this is due to years of chauvinist media propaganda designed to justify the 20-year Anglo-American occupation of Afghanistan, whilst in Pakistan’s case the negative portrayal stems from racist propaganda against the large Pakistani ethnic minority that call this country home.
However, despite frequently being lumped together by chauvinists as ‘muslim terrorist countries’, in reality these two states have very different histories and societies. Afghanistan’s history is closely linked to central Asia and it consists of a myriad of different ethnic groups, the largest being the Pashtuns, closely followed by Tajiks.
The region was only briefly formally colonised by the British Empire (1839-42) and successfully fought a number of wars with the British to retain a de-facto independence throughout the 19th century, although its rulers were forced to accept significant British influence over the government until 1919, when the country secured full independence under a monarchical regime.
The monarchy lasted until 1973, when it was overthrown by an internal coup and a republican system was declared. In 1978, a Marxist-Leninist uprising led by the PDPA-Khalq took over the country and founded a socialist state aligned with the Soviet Union. A massive social upheaval followed and a counter-revolution quickly broke out with the backing of exploiter elements in the countryside who were opposed to socialist land reform aimed at distributing land to the peasants and the outlawing of usury.
The exploiters were able to mobilise the deeply religious rural masses against what was presented to them as the rapid secularisation of the country. At the invitation of the elected Afghan government, the Soviet Union intervened militarily in 1979, replacing the PDPA-Khalq with the PDPA-Parcham (an opposing faction of Afghan communists which was more moderate/revisionist than the Khalq), whilst US imperialism seized the opportunity to turn the rebel ‘mujahideen’ (islamic religious warriors) into a cause célèbre, funnelling huge amounts of weapons and fighters into the conflict to try to bring down the communist government.
Throughout the ten-year conflict, the staunch Marxist-Leninist principles of the original 1978 revolution were gradually diluted as the government struggled to find a way of ending the civil war through compromise with its enemies. The Soviet army withdrew in 1989, having failed to defeat the rebellion, whilst the government abandoned all remaining references to Marxism in 1990.
Following the dissolution of the USSR at the end of 1991, the socialist government in Kabul finally collapsed and infighting between rival warlords wracked the country until the ultra-conservative muslim ‘Taliban’ movement took control in 1996.
The Taliban, while initially prepared to make deals with the United States, proved not to be pliant enough for Washington and were overthrown by the US imperialist-led invasion of 2001. They went on to fight a 20-year guerrilla war against the imperialist occupation, in which they ultimately emerged victorious following the final departure of imperialist troops in 2021.
The United States spent at least $3tn fighting this protracted conflict in pursuit of its geostrategic aims. Afghanistan’s importance comes principally from its geographical location. On the one hand it is the lynchpin of the central Asian states, which Zbigniew Brzezinsky referred to as the ‘central Asian Balkans’ and considered pivotal to the domination of the wider region. Besides this is its proximity to Russia, China, the central Asian republics and the oil-rich Caspian region—a combination that has given the country a significance out of all proportion to the seeming poverty of its people and apparent size of its economy.
Hamid Karzai, the puppet installed as ‘president’ by the United States from 2002-14, was notorious for his corruption, as the proxy of the US army of occupation. The atrocities of the US and Nato forces were heinous and the only lasting legacy, aside from the astronomic profits of the military-industrial complex and the USA’s mounting foreign debt, has been the ever deepening impoverishment of the Afghan people.
Since 2021, Afghanistan has been run effectively as an islamic theocracy led by the Taliban.
Afghanistan’s strategic location, lying across key trade routes at the heart of central Asia, and its rebellious and fiercely patriotic population, make it imperative for imperialism to keep the country in a constant state of disorder and turmoil. Only in this way can the imperialists continue to benefit from untrammelled access to the Afghan people’s land and resources.
It is worth noting also that the Afghan-Pakistan border (known as the Durand Line), like so many borders drawn up by the imperialists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was deliberately designed to provoke future division and conflict by cutting Pashtun tribal lands in half, separating people from their families and ancestral lands.
Successive Afghan governments have protested this issue and requested a review of the border, but all attempts have been stonewalled by the international courts, which insist that the lopsided agreements forced upon the 19th-century Afghan rulers by the British empire must remain in force.
This issue remains a further thorn in Afghanistan’s relations with its southeastern neighbour.
Pakistan’s military theocracy
Pakistan, by contrast, is a very new south Asian country. Its population consists of muslims from across the former British Raj who were encouraged by imperialism to split off violently from India in 1947 and form their own muslim-majority country. Despite the near-constant political tension with India, from a cultural, historical and linguistic perspective Pakistanis are much more similar to Indians than to any of their other neighbours.
In contrast to the tumultuous politics of its northwestern neighbour, Pakistan has retained the veneer of a relatively stable republican system since its foundation in 1947. In reality, underlying this veneer is a de facto military dictatorship that has ruled the country from the day of its independence to the present, and which dominates every aspect of economic and political life.
Whenever a civilian administration has stepped out of line in Islamabad, the country’s apparent ‘democracy’ has been punctuated by a succession of military coups. When Imran Khan made unacceptably anti-imperialist statements concerning the independence of Pakistan from Anglo-American imperialism, he was unconstitutionally removed from power, his party prevented from standing in elections that it was expected to win, and their leader locked up. He continues to languish behind bars.
The relative stability of Pakistan, aside from its status as a nuclear-armed regional power, is in all likelihood derived from the fact that its elite class has been closely and comfortably intertwined with Washington for most of the country’s existence. Pakistan consistently aligned with US imperialism during the cold war, and it was the primary conduit for the weapons and fighters that were sent to the mujahideen rebellion in Afghanistan during the 1980s.
In essence, Pakistan serves as a regional enforcer for Anglo-American imperialism, similar to the role played by some African countries like Rwanda, Kenya or Nigeria. Indeed, being a country whose very existence was essentially the result of a British imperialist plot to divide and weaken south Asian resistance to imperialism, it was perhaps inevitable that Pakistan would adopt such a role.
Pakistan continues to act as a proxy for Anglo-American imperialism
Understanding this role of Pakistan sheds a new light on the current situation. In February 2026, Pakistan launched large-scale strikes on supposed ‘militant camps’ in Afghanistan, claiming ‘self-defence’ against an alleged ‘terror threat’ from anti-Pakistan jihadist militants said to be attacking from bases in Afghanistan. Reports from Afghanistan suggested that a number of civilian targets were hit, and the Afghan military responded with tit-for-tat strikes against Pakistani military installations.
Fighting has since escalated, with Pakistan declaring ‘open war’ against the Taliban government. Since then, Pakistan has been launching near-continuous air strikes on Afghan soil, whilst Afghanistan has been hitting back with drone and artillery attacks.
Whilst no western country has openly backed Pakistan in the conflict, it is clear from reading between the lines that Pakistan has imperialism’s blessing in its bid to punish Afghanistan—a sovereign, fully independent nation run by a patriotic government that, whatever one may think of its ideology, successfully inflicted a humiliating defeat on the imperialists in 20201 that the latter are thirsty to avenge.
The European Union issued a statement calling for “de-escalation” from all sides, whilst specifically calling on Kabul to “take effective action against all terrorist groups operating in or from Afghanistan”—in essence repeating Islamabad’s position on the causes of the conflict.
What little western media coverage has been devoted to the war is noticeably slanted in favour of Pakistan. The Afghan side is routinely delegitimised and referred to merely as ‘the Taliban’, as if Kabul were being represented by a mere rebel group rather than a sovereign national government (not unlike the consist delegitimisation of the Yemeni national government in Sanaa as ‘Houthi rebels’).
Little effort is made to search for the truth when Pakistani claims of striking ‘terrorist camps’ collide with Afghan insistence that mosques and civilian homes are being hit, but there is unanimous condemnation of supposed Afghan human rights violations like ‘forced recruitment by the Taliban’—ie, military conscription by a national government when the country is under attack, a policy that dozens of countries practise, including many European ones.
In a chilling resemblance to the zionists’ actions in Gaza, a Pakistani air strike on 16 March struck a hospital and killed at least 269 people, according to the United Nations. Whilst receiving some limited coverage in the western press owing to the sheer scale of the massacre, there was virtually no western condemnation of Pakistan for committing such a savage war crime—a clear signal that this ‘Pakistani’ war is really an imperialist war outsourced to a regional lackey, much like the so-called ‘Saudi’ war on independent Yemen.
Another feature that characterises this war is the presence of non-state actors on both sides, particularly the Afghan side. Being an isolated and sanctioned country, Afghanistan cannot match the conventional firepower of imperialist-backed Pakistan. However, owing to the shared religious and ethnic bonds with devout muslims in Pakistan, particularly from the Pashtun minority, many militant groups in Pakistan have actively taken up arms against their own country’s military in defence of the Afghan people.
Complicating the situation further, some of these groups are indeed groups that are historically associated with violent takfiri ideology. One of the most prominent of these appears to be the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a group historically associated with brutal mass-casualty terrorist attacks against civilians such as the infamous 2014 attack on a school in Peshawar—although some sources suggest the group may have moved away from such tactics following years of factional infighting and leadership changes.
On the other hand, Afghanistan’s various rump factions of imperialist-backed ‘freedom fighters’ led by apparatchiks from the former US occupation regime have refused to back the Taliban government in the face of the aggression, blaming Kabul for supposedly ‘provoking’ the conflict. In addition, whilst no longer the major threat that it was a few years ago, the US-backed Isis-K takfiri terrorist group remains in the shadows, ready to be re-activated by its imperialist patrons whenever it is deemed necessary.
It is clear that the war between Afghanistan and Pakistan is incapable of benefiting either country. Pakistan started the war, but financing it will undoubtedly increase its debt bondage to its western lenders, which even before the war was lying heavily and unsustainably on the country’s economy.
Although Afghanistan is better able to minimise its military expenditure, the wealth being squandered would be put to much better use improving the standard of living of its people.
In the circumstances, one cannot but conclude that Pakistan is being used as an instrument for US imperialism to wreak its revenge on an Afghan government that humiliated it.