In the early hours of February 21, 2026, Pakistan fulfilled another threat made against the terrorist Taliban regime in Afghanistan, sending shockwaves across a region already on high alert.
While the Pakistan Air Force and UAVs launched attacks on 7 terrorist camps and training facilities spread along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, the Taliban was awakened to the fact that Pakistan was not being facetious in its threats of punitive damage.
As expected, the Taliban cried foul claiming innocent civilians had been targeted, terrorist right organizations and pro-Taliban political parties in Pakistan were quick to condemn the comprehensive strikes on the terror camps.
Pakistan’s Kinetic Strikes on Afghanistan
In October 2025, Pakistan launched a multi-day campaign with both the Pakistan Air Force and UAVs targeting terror camps along the border and carrying out decapitation strikes in Kabul, Kandahar and other areas of Afghanistan where Taliban leadership was known to be hiding. While the decapitation strikes were not successful, the number of terror camps that were decimated from the Pakistan border to Kandahar represented Pakistan’s first campaign, which was so extensive against the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), its leadership and the Afghanistan Taliban leadership.
The strikes inside Afghanistan were only stopped when Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and China involved themselves as mediators, both publicly and in backchannels. Pakistan held to a basic demand – stop the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and their affiliated groups from crossing the border to attack Pakistan or face consequences.
Most of our regular followers on social media and viewers on Survival Dispatch News will recall during the October 2025 kinetic strikes on terror camps in Afghanistan, CommandEleven argued, first, the cessation of kinetic strikes was a mistake. The Taliban was stuck in a position where they would either give up their support for the multiple terror groups targeting Pakistan from Afghanistan’s soil, with Taliban support.
Those terror groups included, but are not limited to, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA), Hafiz Gul Bahadur Group (HGBG), the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), Majlis-e-Askari Karwan (MEK), Ittihad-ul-Mujahideen Pakistan (IUMP), the Baluchistan Liberation Army (BLA, and all their affiliates and paper organizations, created to strike Pakistan without being claimed by the major terror groups.
All of these groups have deep inroads with the Taliban leadership, support from al Qaeda and Haqqani Network command based in Afghanistan.
Since the October 2025 kinetic strikes, the TTP, HGBG and affiliated groups have carried out guerrilla warfare attacks on Pakistan’s military convoys, installations and soldiers, as well as law enforcement spread across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) and Baluchistan. In the past month, ISKP became active again, targeting a Shia Mosque in Islamabad, the nation’s capital.
Recent Kinetic Attack
On 22 February, Pakistan’s selective and intelligence-based kinetic strikes were directed at the following targets in Paktika, Nangarhar, and Khost:
- Urgun and Murgha (Paktika province) – 2 TTP bases and another unit based in a local clinic
- Barmal – a madrassa (religious school) being used by the Taliban’s “Special Brigade of Mansoori Corps”
- Khogyanu (Nangarhar Province) – a border installation was neutralized
- Barmal (Khost Province) – a training facility known to be used to train TTP, Haqqani Network and al Qaeda operatives, was neutralized
- Ghani Khelo (Nangarhar Province)
- Murgha (Paktika province) – the residence of Akhtar Khalil, a key TTP planner, trainer, commander and head of the Majlis-e-Askari Karwan (MEK). Akhtar Khalil, along with 23 terrorists, was killed in the strike
- Khost Province – 1st Infantry Division of the Taliban better known as the 2nd Brigade of the Khalid bin Walid Corps, based out of Kunduz province
- Bihsud (Nangarhar Province) – 2nd Public Order Battalion of the Taliban
The strikes successfully neutralized over 90 TTP, ISKP, HGBG, and AQ commanders, among the hundreds of dead terrorists in the camps. 3 AQ commanders, who were recently moved from Baghlan province to this area are also missing.
It should also be noted the strikes came after the United Nations Security Council Analytical Support and Monitoring Team report reinforced Pakistan’s position, stating “a wide range of member states consistently report that ISKP, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), al Qaeda, the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), Jamaat Ansarullah, Ittihad-ul-Mujahideen Pakistan, and others are present in Afghanistan. Some groups have used or are continuing to use Afghanistan to plan and prepare external attacks.”
As expected, the Taliban leadership cried foul, claiming women and children were targeted, and a violation of Afghanistan’s sovereignty for Pakistan to carry out kinetic strikes on their soil, promising retaliation for the attacks. In their initial statements, the Taliban attempted to paint the attacks as strikes on innocent civilians, apparently not coordinating their propaganda with the TTP, who issued a statement that all the camps struck were military camps being used to train terrorists.
During a supposed meeting, held in Kabul, on Monday, 23 Feb, Haibatullah Akhundzada, Sirajuddin Haqqani, Mullah Yaqoob, and Abdul Ghani Baradar, as well as other senior Taliban leaders in attendance. There are reports close aides of Noor Wali Mehsud, the leader of the TTP, and Basher Zeb, the leader of the Baluchistan Liberation Army (BLA) were also in attendance.
These are the same Taliban and terror group leadership that ran to bunkers when Pakistan started kinetic strikes in Afghanistan. The whereabouts of Noor Wali Mehsud are still unknown after reports he was snatched after leaving a meeting of TTP commanders in Khost.
Sources claim the meeting turned into heated arguments.
The Haqqani faction criticized Akhundzada’s policies toward Pakistan, causing economic and trade losses, growing poverty and increasing international isolation of the Taliban regime. The Haqqani faction emphasized the continued policy against Pakistan was strategically unsustainable and require an urgent change.
While the Kandahar (Akhundzada) and Kabul (Mullah Yaqoob) factions insisted on maintaining support for the terror groups due to ideological affiliation, strategic commitments and supposed “blood obligations,” potentially due to the TTP fighting alongside al Qaeda and the Taliban against the US from 2001-2021.
During the meeting, the potential of the Taliban fracturing if the situation is not brought under control was discussed, as were calls for Haibatullah Akhundzada’s stepping down as the leader of the Taliban, with Haqqani, Baradar and Yaqoob all vying for the leadership position.
All three factions, who have been at odds with each other since the summer of 2025, disagreement on the way forward further signaled each leader maneuvering for greater influence and control of the Taliban movement.
We, at CommandEleven, have doubts about the presence of Haibatullah Akhundzada at this meeting. Akhundzada has been in hiding for most of the Taliban’s regime in power, only emerging for religious messages and edict announcements. Additionally, the animosity between Haqqani and Akhundzada is so significant that both would not be able to sit in the same room, after sending terrorists to Kabul in November 2025 to kill affiliates of the rival leader.
The Taliban leadership, along with their asymmetric terror wings, agreed on a strategy to launch suicide bombers, recruited from various universities in Afghanistan in November and December 2025, into Pakistan, targeting KPK, Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi. This was repeated in numerous Afghanistan media outlets.
This is keeping in mind the Taliban dispatched their “army” to the Pakistan border on the night of the attack to repulse the Pakistani strikes. This, of course, after the Taliban firing rifles at Pakistan Air Force jets didn’t work.
In October 2025, the Taliban dispatched close to 100 suicide bombers into Pakistan to target these same cities, which have yet to be activated. It is unclear if the Taliban intends to again forcibly recruit university students to become suicide bombers for this new campaign against Pakistan.
The Afghanistan public celebrated the kinetic strikes on the terror camps, with Tajiks, Uzbek and Hazara community members publicly voicing their support and willingness to join a Pakistan-led fight to remove the Taliban regime from power. There were also protests led by women in support of the strikes on university campuses.
Assessment
While the US is focused on regime change in Iran, Afghanistan also looks to be a prime candidate. With the public frustrated with the new criminal code, extremely high inflation, continued re-distribution of humanitarian aid to terrorists instead of the general public, calls for external support to dislodge the “de facto regime” from power are gaining. Pakistan’s kinetic strikes were met with significant support.
Interestingly, numerous members of the Afghanistan diaspora based in Europe and the United States, voiced their support for the Taliban. Some of those voices included senior officers of the now defunct Afghanistan National Army, who were re-settled in the United States and working as advisors, lobbyists and contractors to various US federal government institutions.
After the Kabul attack on a Chinese restaurant last month, China recalled all their citizens from Afghanistan due to security reasons, and stopped mining operations in the north of Afghanistan.
This does not change the fact that Russia, China and Iran have all provided funding, training and intelligence support to the Taliban regime since the botched US withdrawal.
With Iran itself facing a direct conflict with both Israel and the United States, Iran suggested moving their command-and-control operations to Afghanistan during the US attack, much like the Taliban and al Qaeda did during the US invasion of Afghanistan. Pakistan’s position against the Taliban and kinetic strikes being a clear possibility makes Iran’s decision significantly more difficult. If Pakistan decides to target the border regions near Iran, where the Kandahari Taliban leadership is in hiding, it would put Iran’s command-and-control structure at risk.
As long as the Taliban regime refuse to take concrete action against the terror groups that enjoy impunity on their soil, the kinetic strikes will continue, neighboring countries will cut ties and the Taliban will face further isolation.
Currently, the only countries actively supporting the Taliban regime are Qatar, Iran, India and the United Arab Emirates. This is not taking into account the weekly funding and “counter-terrorism funds” provided by the United States. Even if the US is able to pass the Stop Funding the Taliban bill currently in the US Senate, it will only stop the humanitarian funds flowing to the terrorist regime. It will not stop the other funds the Taliban is receiving from the United States.
