[PJMedia] A simmering border conflict between Pakistain and Afghanistan flared into full-blown warfare after a surprise Pak air raid on the Afghan cities of Kabul, Khost, Jalalabad, and Paktika ...which coincidentally borders North Wazoo and Kurram Agency... targeting leadership and facilities of Tehrik-e-Taliban ...Arabic for students... Pakistain (TTP). The Pak version of the Taliban, which numbers about 4,000 fighters, broadly cooperated with the Afghan Taliban during our 20-year war, but their real target is replacing the Pak government.
If Pakistain thought that the Afghans were going to sit by meekly while the Paks bombed them, they underestimated the situation. Afghanistan, bolstered by billions of dollars donated by Joe The Big Guy Biden ...46th president of the U.S. Former Senator-for-Life from Delaware, an example of the kind of top-notch Washington intellect to be found in the World's Greatest Deliberative Body.... 's arm-a-terrorist program, has launched attacks at several Pak border installations.
BREAKING:
The Afghan Taliban announce that they have launched attacks against Pakistan at 7 points along the border.
Here, Afghan reinforcements in U.S.-manufactured up-armored HMMWVs move reinforcements to the front lines.
BREAKING:
The Afghan Taliban send large Humvee convoys toward the border with Pakistan as reinforcements after intense fighting breaks out between the 2 countries
🇦🇫🇵🇰🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/paCBEe8RPD
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) October 11, 2025
They are supported by artillery manned by U.S.-trained gun crews.
In 2012 I helped field and train the 201st Corps on their new D-30s.
So an American trained Afghans on a Russian howitzer that ended up with the Taliban who are now firing them into Pakistan. https://t.co/FNuTZFpal3
— Preston Stewart (@prestonstew_) October 11, 2025
They also have a tiny bit of air support provided by the U.S.
Video reportedly of Afghan Super-Tucano aircraft bombing the Pakistani city of Lahore tonight.
Afghanistan A-29 Super Tucano aircraft were provided by the US before Taliban takeover. The aircraft can be armed with two 500-pound bombs, twin .50-caliber machine guns & rockets. pic.twitter.com/zuo67C3I1n
— Mehdi H. (@mhmiranusa) October 11, 2025
Things don't look to be going particularly well for the Pakistanis as the first images of prisoners emerge.
This war is another of those caused by a British civil servant drawing arbitrary lines on a map. In this case, Sir Mortimer Durand drew the eponymous Durand Line in 1893, separating India and Pakistain. As a result, a lot of what would otherwise be Afghans found themselves in the British Indian Empire. The line held as the northern border of Pakistain when the totally non-violent mostly peaceful, peaceful partition of India between Hindus and Moslems took place after Indian Independence. The area has been restive and dangerous to outsiders ever since Pakistain was created.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979—1989) made things a lot more interesting as the U.S. and Saudi Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula, largely made up of sand and oil rigs. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual haj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. Formerly dictatorial and steeped in Olde Tyme Religion, deferring to Salafist holy men on all issues, it has now done a 180 and is making a serious effort to modernize, so as not to be left in the sand by its Gulf Arab neighbors. The holy men have been shoved to the background and the nation is now still dictatorial but somewhat rational. That doesn't make them trustworthy, but it's a start... funneled arms and training to the mujahideen via Pakistain’s ISI intelligence service. The primary recipients of that aid were the Pashtun tribes. These became the Afghan Taliban ...mindless ferocity in a turban... in 1994. They were armed and sheltered by Pakistain as a way of keeping Afghanistan in Pakistain’s orbit and countering Indian influence
Like so many great ideas, this turned out to have flaws.
The TTP, formed in 2007, immediately turned against Islamabad, demanding Sharia governance and autonomy for the Pashtun tribal areas. They used familiar tactics: suicide kabooms, school massacres, and ambushes. During our two decades in Afghanistan, the TTP provided sanctuaries for their Afghan brethren where they could rearm and regroup under the protection of Pakistain. Now, Pakistain is about to be devoured by the monster it created and nurtured.
After the Abbey Gate tragedy, Pakistain’s victory turned to ashes. Where Pakistain thought it had evicted the U.S. from the area and permanently stopped Indian inroads, it was faced by a TTP, using Afghanistan as a sanctuary, unleashing unending violence on the Pak border. Since 2021, there have been over 2,500 TTP attacks, mostly using abandoned U.S. weapons.
As the overall objective appears to be to pry the Pashtun border regions away from Pakistain, Pakistain has ordered the deportation of over 4 million Aghans living in the Durand Line region. Over 800,000 have left.
The pace of attacks and reprisals has escalated over the last year. Pakistain retaliated with border strikes, most significantly in March and December 2024, but that isn’t to say that the TTP hasn’t had some notable successes.
The latest round kicked off with the air raids, which appear to be a Temu knockoff version of Israel’s evisceration of the high commands of Hezbollah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Like most things Pak, the execution wasn’t exemplary.
It is early yet, but one can see how this could turn out to be a self-own on the scale of Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
As you can see, the stakes for Pakistain are immense. The orange and brown areas represent areas that could be lost to Afghanistan or independence if the TTP is successful.
Pakistan's going to have a fun time trying to maintain control of their border territories pic.twitter.com/sK7h8QdMRP
Pakistan is unlikely to receive much help from the Muslim world, as Afghanistan is also Muslim and arguably more so than Pakistan. Saudi Arabia joined a mutual defense pact with Pakistan in September, but Saudi Arabia's military is not capable of projecting measurable power, and the Saudi experience in Yemen doesn't leave one with the feeling that Saudi involvement would do more than create targets and hostages for the TTP.
China probably can't let this crisis go to waste and will find a way to meddle in it.
The wild card here is Trump's desire to reoccupy Bagram air base in Afghanistan (see Trump Drops Bombshell: U.S. Trying to Reclaim Key Asset From Taliban – RedState). The issue seems to be dead, but if it is still kicking, then peace between Afghanistan and Pakistan is vital, as Bagram is not sustainable without Pakistani logistics support.
As the Afghans are more warlike and capable than the Pakistanis and are at parity in armaments, things don't look good if Pakistan tries to impose a military solution on the problem.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
10/14/2025 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1785 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
Sounds like a lovely little war to stay out of.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
10/14/2025 12:18 Comments ||
Top||
#2
The Paks deserve everything they get. Some remember the Durand Line and Paki provided sanctuary for the Taliban during the US Afghan involvement.
#3
Remember Laos and North Vietnam? IUC, After the war the Laotians got pissy when the winning North Vietnamese starting purging foreigners -- so Laos decided their guerilla war prowess was unbeatable. Problem, guerilla war doesn't work very well when (a) the other side (NV) is willing to "go Mongol on your ass" and (b) the NVA had all of the equipment they captured from South Vietnam, but mostly (a). Then China 'intervened' because Laos was their client state. Popcorn time!
[TheHill] Rolling blackouts. A worthless currency. A once-mighty industry on life support. Doctors, engineers and students leaving in droves in search of a future. That all sounds like Venezuela
...a country in Central America that sits on an enormous pool of oil. Formerly the most prospereous country in the region, it became infested with Commies sniffing almost unlimited wealth. It turned out the wealth wasn't unlimited, the economy collapsed under the clownish Hugo Chavez, the murder rate exceeded places like Honduras and El Salvador. A significant proportion of the populace refugeed to Colombia and points south... , but I’m talking about Cuba.
As Venezuela’s crisis deepens, another — quieter but just as dangerous — is unfolding just 90 miles from Florida. The drama may be smaller, but the danger is real. If Venezuela is wobbling, Cuba is starting to fall.
On Sept. 10, Cuba’s entire electrical grid failed, plunging nearly 10 million people into darkness. It was the island’s fourth nationwide blackout in less than a year. Even before that, much of the country was losing power for half the day. Officials blamed machinery; Cubans blamed the system.
The country’s energy network has become a patchwork of corroded plants and emergency repairs. Over the past 14 months, it has suffered a dozen nationwide outages. Years of neglect and the burning of high-sulfur crude have crippled its power stations. As U.S. sanctions tighten on Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s ability to keep its ally supplied with oil has withered.
Fuel shipments from Venezuela — Havana’s economic lifeline for two decades — now fluctuate wildly, sometimes dropping below 10,000 barrels a day before rebounding. Russia and Mexico have stepped in with emergency cargoes, but neither offers stability. Without steady deliveries, plants sputter and nights become suffocating. In some towns, residents cook by candlelight, charge phones at work, and sleep on rooftops to escape the heat.
NEW: Venezuela closes its embassy in Norway after the Nobel Peace Prize announcement. pic.twitter.com/a0sNm1kGfx
Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin is in italics. [ColonelCassad] "The Last Jew of Vinnytsia" is one of the most famous symbols of the Holocaust.
I don't know where the name came from, but the photo is not Vinnitsa, but Berdychev, and the Jew was not yet the last.
The photo was taken on July 28, 1941. In 1944, 960 bodies of Jews and prisoners of the Red Army were taken out of the moat shown in the photo. The murders of Jews in Berdychev continued until September 15.
A total of 38,536 Soviet citizens were killed in Berdychev, including the mother of the Soviet writer Vasily Grossman.
Not so long ago, a citizen recognized his wife's uncle in a photo. I compared the uncle's photo from the family archive provided by the relatives with the help of AI, and the name of the executioner in the photo was confirmed.
He turned out to be Jacobus Onnen, a member of Einsatzgruppe "C", a member of the NSDAP since 1931 and a former school teacher. The former teacher was de-Nazified by Soviet partisans near Kiev in August 1943.
A characteristic example of false attribution of a photograph.
After the better part of a century of the Soviets falsifying their history even as it was happening, it’s healthy that modern Russia has started working to reveal what really happened.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Leonid Tsukanov
[REGNUM] Israel and Hamas, under the auspices of international mediators, are continuing their peace process. The first symbolic stage—the exchange of hostages and prisoners—is nearing completion. An even more ambitious step lies ahead: the signing of a "permanent peace treaty," which will pave the way for long-term agreements.
However, even with such a positive development of events in Tel Aviv, behind-the-scenes debates continue about the future of the Palestinian enclave.
LONG-AWAITED FREEDOM
The release of Israelis and foreigners held captive by Hamas began at 4:00 a.m. Moscow time. The first eight have already been handed over to Israeli forces.
Another dozen will be released soon, under guarantees from the Red Cross and the Red Crescent Society. Representatives of humanitarian organizations have already arrived in the enclave and are preparing to transport the freed to Israeli territory. In total, the survivors spent 738 days in Palestinian captivity.
At the same time, the return of the bodies of Israelis who died in custody is currently complicated – representatives of the movement and Arab mediators note that due to the high activity of Israeli air force and artillery in the final stage of the conflict, Hamas is unable to deliver them to the exchange sites in a timely manner.
All 20 living hostages were returned, all in very bad shape. But only four of the dead, with no commitment of when Hamas would give up the rest of the bodies.
There is also a risk that the issue of the return of the dead, which is not as pressing for the Israeli authorities, will drag on and go beyond the implementation of the first stage of the agreements.
Hamas is still trying to hold onto some bodies as human shields. And even the day before yesterday, they were trying to capture IDF soldiers to replace those they were about to give up.
Israel has also prepared groups of Palestinian prisoners for transfer to Hamas (a total of 1,900 people) and will soon distribute them to designated locations: 1,700 will return to Gaza, 15 to East Jerusalem, and 100 to Judea and Samaria. The rest will be deported.
Clearing out the prisons to make room for the new terrorists to be arrested in the days, weeks, months to come.
At the same time, Tel Aviv still does not disclose who exactly is included in the “final list.”
HUNTING FOR LOYALISTS
The withdrawal from Gaza gave Hamas the opportunity to return to areas previously controlled by Tel Aviv. This came as an unpleasant surprise to the Bedouin militias and clan militias fighting alongside the Israelis.
In fact, they were left alone with the enemy and without the support of the local population, which literally bombarded the returning Palestinian security forces with information about collaborators.
The main blow fell on the Popular Forces (formerly the Gaza Control Committee, which controls part of Rafah), which participated in Israeli offensive operations and also destroyed humanitarian aid arriving in the enclave. During the first 24 hours of the "ceasefire," at least fifty Israeli proxies were arrested, including several commanders.
Loyalist leader Yasser Abu Shabab and his closest associates have taken refuge in a fortified residential complex located near Israeli checkpoints. For this reason, Hamas is in no rush to launch an assault, fearing provoking Israeli retaliatory fire, and is instead planning to attrite its opponents.
In addition, Palestinian intelligence agencies launched a hunt for the Dogmush clan, whose members also actively assisted Israeli military operations—in particular, by helping direct aircraft and artillery to areas where the movement's command posts were based.
However, unlike the Popular Forces, the reason for the vendetta was the assassination by loyalists of the well-known Palestinian journalist Saleh al-Jafrawi, who, although not a member of Hamas, made a major contribution to reporting on the situation in the enclave.
Israel is currently turning a blind eye to internal clashes between Palestinians and is in no rush to rescue its former tactical allies. Israeli security officials are evasive in responding to journalists' questions about the future of the loyalists, preferring not to focus on their failed attempts to defeat Hamas from within.
TRUMP'S OPTIMISM
However, the main focus this time is not on the situation in the enclave, but on US President Donald Trump's visit to Israel. The Republican is en route to Egypt for the "Peace Summit," where he plans to ceremoniously announce peace between Hamas and Israel and sign a historic agreement.
In addition to Trump and Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the summit will be attended by leaders of more than 20 countries, including Great Britain, Italy, Spain, France, Turkey and other states.
But not Israel, a fascinating situation.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres and European Council President António Costa will also be present. Hamas's interests will be represented by friendly mediators Egypt and Qatar.
However, despite the fact that Trump is only passing through Israel, his agenda includes a ceremonial speech at the local parliament, talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other high-ranking officials.
Trump told Knesset members that the agreements he brokered were "an incredible victory for Israel and the world. This is the historic dawn of a new Middle East."
It is possible that he will also make time to meet with the freed hostages, especially since among them are citizens of the United States and countries friendly to Washington.
Judging by his first public statements, the American president is optimistic and convinced that the signing of a "permanent peace" between Israel and Hamas will proceed without any particular difficulties.
Moreover, according to Trump himself, the Palestinians even accepted some of the controversial terms of his initiative. For example, some Hamas units agreed to disarm and leave the enclave in exchange for security guarantees. However, the movement itself has not confirmed this information.
A DELICATE BALANCE
Although the overall positive momentum for a settlement remains, no one, with the exception of Trump, is rushing to draw far-reaching conclusions.
Pessimists are convinced that the agreements between Israel and Hamas will have to be reinforced "at least several times," especially given that the movement has continued to avoid direct participation in signing a peace agreement.
Moreover, the Hamas leadership has not abandoned the idea of maintaining influence in the post-war enclave – at least through factions friendly to it – which categorically does not suit official Tel Aviv.
The risk of political revenge in the Palestinian enclave, in turn, fuels the fears of Israeli hawks, who are increasingly pressuring Netanyahu and his entourage to withdraw from the negotiations immediately after the body of the last dead hostage leaves Gaza.
As a result, an interesting situation has emerged for Tel Aviv: on the one hand, the Israeli authorities managed to emerge from the protracted conflict with minimal losses (although the goal of militarily defeating Hamas was never achieved) and strengthen domestic political stability. The key divisive factor—the fate of the hostages—is now off the table.
On the other hand, with the cessation of hostilities, maintaining a balance of interests within the government will become much more difficult. The coalition needs a unifying enemy, which has disappeared from the agenda since the reconciliation with Hamas.
Although Tel Aviv is trying to shift its focus to confronting Hezbollah and even launching periodic airstrikes in southern Lebanon, this tactic hasn't been very effective so far. The "hawks" continue to see Hamas, rather than other forces hostile to Israel, as the primary threat.
[IsraelTimes] Decades after Arafat was pushed out of Beirut, Hamas’s leaders may also choose exile over death; despite key differences, history shows what pitfalls may lie ahead for Israel
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
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Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
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Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...46th president of the U.S. Former Senator-for-Life from Delaware, an example of the kind of top-notch Washington intellect to be found in the World's Greatest Deliberative Body....
[ColonelCassad] "The Last Jew of Vinnytsia" is one of the most famous symbols of the Holocaust.
