On October 18, 2025, successive air strikes by Pakistan in Paktika Province killed eight people, including three club cricketers attending a post-match gathering. The incident sparked particular outrage and inflamed public sentiment in Afghanistan. The Afghanistan Cricket Board subsequently withdrew from a planned triangular T20 series with Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
A new ceasefire between Pakistan and Afghanistan came into effect on October 19, 2025, following intensive talks in Doha mediated by Qatar and Turkey. Delegations led by the defence ministers of both countries agreed to halt offensive operations and to refrain from supporting groups that carry out attacks against the other state. Mediators also pledged a monitoring mechanism and scheduled a follow-up meeting in Istanbul later in October.
Negotiators reported that discussions lasted over 12 hours, reflecting strong international pressure to transform fragile calm into a verifiable truce.
The Doha session followed an earlier 48-hour truce that had been agreed on October 15 and extended again on October 17, but was repeatedly strained by fresh incidents.
Notably, overnight clashes of October 11-12, 2025, along the volatile 2,640-kilometre Durand Line between Afghanistan and Pakistan marked one of the deadliest confrontations in recent years, resulting in several deaths and reigniting deep-seated tensions. The violence followed Pakistan’s controversial airstrike in Kabul on October 9, 2025, which Islamabad claimed targeted Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Noor Wali Mehsud. The attack, however, allegedly struck a crowded civilian market, killing at least 15 non-combatants.
By midday on October 12, artillery exchanges between both sides subsided following urgent mediation by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, but Pakistan’s air strikes continued.
According to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), at least 37 civilians have been killed and 425 injured in cross-border strikes and clashes during the week beginning October 10, with the majority of casualties in Kandahar, Paktika, and Khost in Afghanistan. Additional civilian deaths were reported in Paktika, Paktia, Kunar, and Helmand during earlier skirmishes. These losses form part of a wider pattern since 2021: Afghan officials reported that the April 2022 strikes in Khost and Kunar killed around 47 civilians, and December 2024 bombardments in Paktika left scores dead. Varying reports indicate that Pakistani airstrikes inside Afghanistan between August 2021 and October 2025 killed between 210 and 230 civilians and injured several hundred more. Human Rights Watch has repeatedly condemned these attacks, noting that repeated strikes on populated villages demonstrate “disregard for civilian life” and urged both sides to avoid actions that endanger innocent non-combatants.
The causes of the violence are longstanding and highly complex. Islamabad accuses Kabul of tolerating or harbouring Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militants, who have carried out hundreds of attacks over the past year in Pakistan, putting immense pressure on Security Forces of that country. Kabul denies state sponsorship and points to militant operations conducted from Pakistani territory. Relations are further complicated by sharp divergences over the Durand Line: the Taliban rejects this colonial-era boundary, which Pakistan treats as its international frontier. The dispute complicates cooperative border policing and leaves room for unilateral strikes that risk civilian harm. Mutual accusations, retaliatory operations, and ideological differences have created a cycle of hostility, destabilizing border communities and undermining earlier efforts at de-escalation, prolonging uncertainty in the region
Given the record, there is little possibility that the October 19 truce will endure. Domestic political pressures in both capitals, the unresolved status of the Durand Line, and the TTP’s hardline rhetoric – often describing the Pakistani state as murtad (apostate) – suggest that renewed fighting is likely.
For now, the Doha-brokered ceasefire represents a temporary pause in a four-year cycle of airstrikes, retaliatory raids, and diplomatic breakdowns that have killed more than hundreds of Afghan civilians, even as TTP strikes in Pakistan have inflicted hundreds of fatalities among Pakistan’s security forces, as well as civilians, and destabilized the frontier. Its ultimate success depends on a slim hope that Kabul and Islamabad can convert this fragile pause into a sustainable framework for regional stability, effective civilian protection, and lasting trust between the two neighbours.