When the Taliban seized power in Kabul in August 2021, Pakistan’s Interior Minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed delivered a triumphant news conference at the Torkham crossing with Afghanistan. He claimed that the Taliban’s swift ascendance to power would create “a new bloc” and the region would reach great global importance.

The first cross-border strike inside Afghanistan since March came after a spate of attacks by the Pakistan Taliban.

A Taliban government official said the airstrikes Pakistan launched on Afghanistan Tuesday killed 46 people, including women and children, according to The Associated Press.  Hamdullah Fitrat, the