By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: The Foreign Office said on Thursday that a temporary pause in its military operation against the Afghan Taliban had ended, and strikes would resume immediately and continue “until its objectives are achieved.”
The announcement came hours after Pakistani authorities reopened the Torkham border crossing with Afghanistan, allowing the first group of stranded Afghan nationals to return home after nearly a month of closure.
Foreign Office spokesperson Tahir Andrabi told reporters at the weekly briefing that Operation Ghazab lil-Haq, launched on the night of Feb. 26 after cross-border firing by the Afghan Taliban, remains “a precise, targeted operation, military campaign directed against terrorist leadership and their support and command infrastructure, logistics networks and facilitators and abettors of these terrorist acts within the Taliban regime and in the Taliban-controlled area.”
A temporary pause had been observed, Andrabi said, “in deference to Eidul Fitr celebrations and in response to requests from our brotherly Islamic countries.” The halt ended at midnight between March 23 and 24. Operations, he said, will now proceed until the Afghan Taliban “reviews its misplaced priority of supporting terror infrastructures and terror proxies over the welfare of their own Afghan people.”
The Foreign Office statement followed remarks made on March 18 by Information Minister Attaullah Tarar, who had described the pause as a gesture offered “in good faith and in keeping with Islamic norms.” At the time, Tarar said the decision came at the request of several Muslim nations. Shortly after Pakistan’s announcement last month, the Afghan Taliban declared their own temporary suspension of military operations against Pakistan. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the move was made in response to appeals from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar.
Earlier this week, a group of clerics from Pakistan and Afghanistan had jointly appealed to both governments to extend the pause through Eidul Azha, the major Islamic festival later this year. The resumption of the operation shows Islamabad’s deepening frustration with the Taliban government in Kabul, which returned to power in 2021. Pakistani officials have repeatedly pressed the Taliban to dismantle terrorist sanctuaries on Afghan soil, particularly those used by the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the militant group blamed for a sharp resurgence of attacks inside Pakistan. Those appeals, Pakistani officials say, have been ignored.
In a related development Thursday, Pakistani authorities reopened the Torkham border crossing, which had been closed since the launch of the military operation on Feb. 26. Officials at a temporary transit center near the Hamza Baba mausoleum in Landi Kotal said the first group of 50 Afghan nationals — who had been stranded since late February — were processed and allowed to cross after receiving clearance from Islamabad.
The Afghans had been sheltering at a mosque in the Landi Kotal bazaar. A second group of about 100 Afghans was brought from Peshawar later in the day, immigration authorities said. Stranded families whose passports or visas had expired were also permitted to return after completing registration. Pakistani officials said they had met briefly with their Afghan counterparts at the border’s Zero Point and handed over the names and details of Pakistani nationals who are to be allowed safe passage back into Pakistan.
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