Operation “Righteous Fury”: Pakistani airstrikes on Afghanistan

Kabir · February 27, 2026 · 5 comments

Pakistan struck Afghanistan early Friday morning in response to Afghan attacks Thursday night on various locations in KPK.

According to Defense Minister Khawaja Asif, the Taliban have become “a proxy for India”. Asif said: “Our patience has run out. Now there is an open war”.

Those criticizing this operation should recognize that this is exactly the playbook India used in “Operation Sindoor”. War is obviously not a good outcome for anyone but national security trumps everything. There had been a Qatar and Turkey mediated ceasefire between Pakistan and Afghanistan but the Taliban have clearly not clamped down on TTP.

There seems to have been a “rally around the flag” effect with even the PTI making social media posts in support of Pakistan’s armed forces.

DAWN’s live blog is here

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Kabir

I am Pakistani-American. I am a Hindustani classical vocalist and ethnomusicologist. I hold a B.A from George Washington University (Dramatic Literature, Western Music) and an M.Mus (Ethnomusicology) from SOAS, University of London. My dissertation “A New Explanation for the Decline of Hindustani Music in Pakistan” has recently been published by Aks Publications (Lahore 2024). Samples of my singing can be heard on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/artist/0Le1RnQQJUeKkkXj5UCKfB View all posts by Kabir

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Admin

X.T.M

8 hours ago

don’t know much about it; but seems rather foolish of Afghanistan to be doing this

Author

Kabir

7 hours ago

Reply to X.T.M

Yes, all they needed to do was control TTP and not allow Afghan territory to be used to attack Pakistan.

For some reason they refuse to do this. The Pakistan Government alleges that Afghanistan is working in cahoots with India to encircle Pakistan. India obviously denies this but this is exactly what one would expect a hostile state to do.

This is now a national security threat to Pakistan. Enough is Enough.

DGISPR will be giving a press conference at 4 PM to inform the nation of what’s going on.

Author

Kabir

7 hours ago

“Where do Pakistan, Afghanistan go from here?”

By Baqir Sajjad Syed

https://www.dawn.com/news/1976128/

However misplaced that logic may be, given that the initial breach of Afghan sovereignty occurred when terrorist groups were allowed sanctuary there, the public mobilisation still serves a domestic purpose as it projects resolve to constituencies that expect the regime to defend Afghan soil.
Another calculation may have been that the escalation would remain contained. There is precedent. In October last year, after intense clashes, back channels and Qatari-Turkiye mediation produced a ceasefire. Though the understanding was uneasy, it worked. Kabul may have assumed that another round of tit-for-tat exchanges would similarly be cooled by intermediaries once tempers had flared.
But that assumption proved risky.
Pakistan responded not with ambiguity but with a named operation — “Ghazab lil-Haq” or “Righteous Fury” — and carried out airstrikes that reached deep into Afghan territory, including targets around Kabul, Kandahar, Paktia and Nangarhar. Meanwhile, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif spoke in unusually blunt terms, saying patience had reached its limit and characterised the situation as open war.

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Author

Kabir

1 hour ago

It’s interesting that Pakistan’s Information Minister referred to the Taliban as “an illegitimate system of government”. This is kind of ironic given that Pakistan helped the Taliban to defeat the US.

Imran Khan was delighted when Ashraf Ghani (incidentally a friend of my parents from Washington DC) fled Kabul.

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Admin

X.T.M

4 minutes ago

Reply to Kabir

it’s quite funny that the threads are now partitioned.