Pakistani Taliban leader thought to be targeted in airstrike on Afghan capital

The leader of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan (TTP) is rumored to have been killed in a Pakistani military airstrike in the Afghan capital of Kabul yesterday. The strike took place as tensions between Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban have risen due to the TTP using Afghanistan as a safe haven to execute attacks inside Pakistan.

Several strikes took place “near Abdulhaq Square” in Kabul, Amu TV reported, based on local sources. Numerous accounts on X claimed that Noor Wali Mehsud, the head of the TTP, was the target of the strike, and some claimed he was killed in an attack that targeted him while he was in a vehicle.

The TTP has not confirmed Mehsud’s death, and an audio statement from Mehsud confirming that he is alive has purportedly been released by the group. However, FDD’s Long War Journal cannot verify the veracity of this statement attributed to Mehsud.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid acknowledged that an “explosion” took place in Kabul. However, Mujahid would not confirm the source of the explosion, nor whether Mehsud was killed.

“The sound of an explosion was heard in the city of Kabul,” Mujahid said on X. “However, no one should worry, it is all well and good, the investigation of the incident is underway, no report of any damage has been given so far.”

The Taliban hasn’t made any other official statements on the strike since the attack took place nearly 24 hours ago.

The Pakistani military, which is thought to have carried out the airstrike, has been coy about the incident. During a press conference that addressed the rising tide of TTP violence in Pakistan, Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, the director general of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Public Relations, dodged the issue, neither confirming nor denying Pakistani involvement in the Kabul incident.

“Afghanistan is a neighbourly, Islamic country,” Chaudhry stated when asked about the explosions in Kabul, according to Dawn. “We have historical connections, cultural connections. Pakistan has hosted Afghan refugees for four decades. We only say one thing to the Afghan government: do not allow your soil to be used for terrorism against Pakistan.”

The strike in Kabul took place one day after the TTP ambushed a Pakistani military unit in Arakzai and killed 11 troops, including two officers.

If Mehsud’s death is confirmed, he would be the second high-level foreign terrorist leader killed in Kabul since the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. On July 31, 2022, the US killed Ayman al Zawahiri, the emir of Al Qaeda, in a drone strike as he was living in a safe house that was operated by the Haqqani Network in Kabul. The Taliban and Al Qaeda never acknowledged his death, as the Taliban denies that foreign terrorists are present in the country.

The Afghan Taliban and the TTP: “the bonds are close, and the debt owed to TTP significant”

Despite repeated Taliban denials, Al Qaeda, the TTP, and a host of foreign terror groups, such as the Turkistan Islamic Party, operate freely in Afghanistan with the approval and support of the Taliban.

According to the United Nations Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team, Al Qaeda is operating training camps in 12 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, as well as safe houses, religious schools, a media operations center, and a weapons storage facility. Al Qaeda “still uses Afghanistan as a permissive haven under the Taliban,” the Monitoring Team noted in July 2024.

The Monitoring Team also reported in July 2024 that the Afghan Taliban and the TTP maintain a “close” relationship. The TTP “continues to operate at significant scale in Afghanistan and to conduct terrorist operations into Pakistan from there” with the support of the Afghan Taliban.

“[The] Afghan Taliban have proved unable or unwilling to manage the threat posed by Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan,” the Monitoring Team noted. “Member States described this as too big a challenge for the Afghan Taliban to manage, even if they wanted to.”

“The [Afghan] Taliban do not conceive of TTP as a terrorist group: the bonds are close, and the debt owed to TTP significant,” the Monitoring Team stated, referencing the TTP’s support for the Afghan Taliban’s two-decade-long insurgency that culminated in its takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021.

The TTP not only views itself as close to the Afghan Taliban, but it also considers itself part of the Afghan Taliban. In August 2021, just days after the Afghan Taliban took control of Kabul and the rest of the country, TTP emir Mehsud renewed his oath of allegiance to the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

“As a result, for twenty years, praise be to Allah, we defeated the great tyrant of modern times [the US] and his slaves [the Afghan government] and crowned the entire Islamic Ummah and especially the Mujahid and Ghazi Afghan people,” Mehsud wrote, noting that the Taliban was part of the effort to defeat the US and Afghan governments.

Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD’s Long War Journal.