Islamabad, June 3 (IANS) The recent clash between Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Pakistani security forces in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa might seem like another development in a persistent insurgency. However, the clash is an early sign of a shifting security order, one that neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan is yet ready to fully confront, a report has stated.
The different statements that emerged from the recent clash in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa reflect the ongoing transformation of security dynamics along the Afghanistan–Pakistan border, according to a report in Eurasia Review.
“TTP, responsible for extensive casualties among civilians and the military in Pakistan, claimed it had killed Haji Bari Mama, a former commander of Afghanistan’s border forces and the Afghan Local Police (ALP). Bari Mama previously served as police chief of Machili district in Helmand, a region historically marked by Taliban insurgency, narcotics trafficking, and US-supported counterinsurgency efforts,” Ajmal Sohail wrote in Eurasia Review.
Meanwhile, the Pakistani military said that two TTP fighters – Topail and Haidar Waziri, were killed in the same incident. The report said that the death of former Afghan commander in TTP-Pakistan clash should be an issue of concern for policymakers in Pakistan, Kabul and beyond.
If the statement released by TTP is true, then Haji Bari Mama’s presence in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa demonstrates troubling possibilities. Many former Afghan security officials displaced, unemployed or targeted after Taliban seized power in Afghanistan have scattered throughout the region. Some of them have taken refuge while others have become security contractors, fixers, or intermediaries in the borderlands. Few former Afghan officials have become part of militant groups.
“Whether Bari Mama was present as a civilian, a broker, or an active participant remains uncertain. What his death does illustrate, however, is that the collapse of the Afghan Republic did not end its security networks, it dispersed them. These remnants are now interacting with Pakistan’s own landscape of insurgency,” Sohail wrote in Eurasia Review.
By announcing the killing of former Afghan state security official, the TTP has showcased the group’s reach into Afghan-origin networks, warning former Afghan personnel that they remain within TTP’s grasp and boosting morale internally by showing the group can kill “high-value” targets. Meanwhile, Pakistan military by announcing the killing of two TTP members demonstrates that the state continues to have control and militants are being killed.
“The death of Haji Bari Mama forces a critical question: How many more former Afghan security officials are now involved, willingly or otherwise, in the militant networks of the borderlands? Unless Islamabad and Kabul recognise and address this new reality, such clashes will continue to be dismissed as routine. In truth, they are early signs of a shifting security order, one that neither country is yet prepared to fully confront,” the report stated further.
Earlier in April, a report claimed that Pakistani forces, while conducting counter-terrorism campaigns in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, have many times been accused of using lethal force in ways that have repeatedly killed several innocent civilians, including women and children.
“International human-rights organisations and independent reporting point to airstrikes, drone attacks and ground operations that blur the line between lawful targetting of armed groups and unlawful, or at least reckless, attacks on civilians, especially in tribal districts such as North Waziristan and Khyber. The result is a climate in which Pashtun communities feel simultaneously trapped between militant violence and state firepower, while accountability for civilian deaths remains virtually absent,” a report in Greece-based Directus mentioned.
In 2025, at least 30 people were killed, including women and children, when Pakistan Air Force JF‑17 fighter jets at around 2 am reportedly dropped eight LS‑6 precision‑guided bombs on the Matre Dara village in the Tirah Valley of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in an overnight airstrike. Images and videos from the site showed bodies of young children and adults scattered among the rubble. According to local residents, no militants were present there at the time of the strike.
Human rights activists contended that even if Pakistan believed Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) fighters were nearby, the scale of harm caused to civilians indicated Islamabad’s failure to apply the principles of distinction and proportionality required under international humanitarian law.
In 2025, Amnesty International condemned what it termed an “alarming disregard for civilian life” in drone strikes in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that repeatedly killed civilians, including children, according to the report in Directus. The organisation documented several strikes in 2025 and mentioned that Pakistani authorities had acknowledged some civilian deaths but often blamed them on militant attacks or misrepresented the victims as combatants. The organisation had demanded transparent probe, public disclosure of targeting process and compensation for families of victims.
According to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police statistics, from January-August 2025, the province recorded 605 terror incidents, which claimed the lives of 138 civilians and 79 police personnel. These statistics do not separate deaths caused by militants from those attributable to state actions, however, they indicate the scale of lethal violence in which children and women are often caught.
As per the report, analysts argued that official statistics routinely undercount or obscure civilian casualties from state operations as deaths are not formally recorded or victims are mislabelled as militants in official documents.
–IANS
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