KABUL—The Taliban summoned Pakistan’s chargé d’affaires after Pakistani airstrikes, opening a formal warranty claim on the “historic brotherhood” Islamabad believed it had purchased with decades of support.
Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi asked whether Pakistan’s strategic depth package normally included aircraft overhead. The envoy said he lacked authority to discuss the premium version, which comes with deniability, coordinates and a statement blaming Kabul.
Pakistan’s army chief, Asim Munir, says Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan fighters operate from Afghan territory. The Taliban denies this, maintaining its strict policy that militants become visible only after attacking the country that complains about them.
Asim Munir’s army had expected the Taliban’s 2021 return to Kabul to produce a friendly government. It instead received the region’s most expensive lesson in the difference between sponsoring an insurgency and raising a grateful adult.
Muttaqi insisted Afghanistan was independent and would accept no dictation from Islamabad. Trump, catching a whiff of the dispute, threatened to settle it by renaming Deoband Trump Madrasa and Akora Khattak America’s Nuts, adding that both institutions had produced “many tremendously successful graduates, some of whom went on to stage entire suicide-vest vanity shows that gave Italian fashion houses a run for their money.”
The chargé d’affaires promised to deliver Kabul’s protest. Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry will acknowledge it; Asim Munir’s army will assess it; television anchors will invade Afghanistan by 9 p.m.
Pakistan celebrated the Taliban’s return, then began bombing its former investment. Asim Munir was left asking Washington to explain why Pakistan’s sponsorship package now included home delivery.