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‘New Normal’: Is Pakistan trying to set new red lines with Afghan Taliban?
Islamabad, Pakistan – When Pakistan’s foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, visited Kabul in April and met his Afghan Taliban counterpart, Amir Khan Muttaqi, analysts viewed the occasion as marking a reset of relations amid the increasing hostilities between the two former allies.
Subsequent meetings between the two in May and August, brokered by China, reinforced that sentiment.
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But a deadly weekend of clashes along the countries’ porous border has put those diplomatic overtures on hold. Islamabad says it killed more than 200 Taliban fighters; the Taliban government says 58 Pakistani soldiers were killed. The death toll on both sides underscores how fragile the détente earlier in the year was.
Pakistan, which has been grappling with a dramatic surge in attacks – especially in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where dozens of military personnel have died – accuses the Taliban of giving sanctuary to armed groups that launch cross-border attacks.
The Taliban denies those charges. But on Thursday night, Kabul was rocked by explosions and gunfire. Pakistan neither confirmed nor denied involvement, but the Taliban government said Pakistan had been behind the attacks in Kabul and in an eastern Afghan province, and promised retaliation.
Fighting flared again on Saturday night. Pakistan acknowledged that the clashes left at least 23 of its soldiers dead and another 29 injured, and said its forces had taken control of more than 21 posts on Afghan territory. Kabul has not confirmed the Taliban’s casualty figures.
That immediate military escalation has passed, but the clashes have evoked parallels with Pakistan’s tense new equation with its eastern neighbour, India, after New Delhi blamed Islamabad for the killing of 26 civilians in Indian-administered Kashmir in April.
Like the Taliban’s position on anti-Pakistan armed groups ostensibly operating from Afghan soil, Islamabad, too, rejected any link with the attackers in Indian-administered Kashmir. But just as Islamabad has long accused the Taliban of sheltering groups that attack Pakistan, India has, for decades, alleged that Pakistan supports and sponsors “terrorist” groups that target its territory.
Now, some analysts say, Pakistan is trying to establish a “new normal” with the Taliban, by making clear that future attacks on its soil could invite retribution inside Afghanistan. The stance mirrors a position India’s Narendra Modi government took against Pakistan in April, and that Islamabad protested against at the time.
India launched strikes inside Pakistani territory in May, resulting in a four-day-long conflict, with both sides using missiles, drones and artillery to attack each other.
This shifting landscape between Pakistan and Afghanistan suggests, analysts say, that while the fighting over the weekend might have eased, tensions are likely to simmer in the coming weeks, and a lasting breakthrough remains elusive.
Trigger behind the border clashes
Out of the various armed groups reportedly operating from Afghanistan, Pakistani authorities regard the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) as the biggest threat. The TTP emerged in 2007 amid the United States-led, so-called “war on terror”, and has for years waged an armed campaign against Islamabad.
It seeks to implement strict Islamic law, has demanded the release of imprisoned members, and calls for a reversal of the merger of Pakistan’s former tribal areas with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The TTP is independent of Afghanistan’s Taliban, but the two groups are ideologically aligned.
Islamabad blames Kabul for allowing sanctuary for the TTP, as well as other groups such as the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP).
TTP attacks have increased sharply since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, and numbers highlight the increasing trend.
“Our data show that the TTP engaged in at least 600 attacks against, or clashes with, security forces in the past year alone. Its activity in 2025 so far already exceeds that seen in all of 2024,” a recent report by the US-based Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) project said.
In the last few days, several attacks have killed more than two dozen Pakistani soldiers, including officers, with the latest such incident on October 8.
Regional powers – including China, Iran and Russia – have repeatedly urged the Taliban to eliminate the TTP and other armed groups operating from Afghanistan. That call was renewed at the Moscow Format consultation in early October, which was also attended by Muttaqi, the Taliban foreign minister.
Abdul Basit, a scholar of militancy and a research fellow at Singapore’s S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said he expects more diplomacy in the coming days, led by countries that have strong ties with both the Taliban and Pakistan, such as Gulf nations or China.
“I think it is plausible that Islamabad and Kabul will hold another round of meetings in some third country to re-engage in dialogue, but I believe that tensions will continue to simmer, sometimes going up or sometimes going down. We certainly cannot rule out another round of hostilities at the border,” he told Al Jazeera.
Seema Ilahi Baloch, a former Pakistani ambassador who has been involved in informal Pakistan-Afghanistan talks in the past, said that Islamabad had so far failed to persuade the Taliban to prevent Afghanistan from being used as a base for attacks against Pakistan.
“Both sides must realise that such conflicts undermine bilateral cooperation and negatively impact regional stability,” she said. “China, which has influence in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, can be the interlocutor to mend fences between the two through diplomacy,” she added.
Islamabad’s new normal?
Still, analysts say it is becoming increasingly difficult for Pakistan’s officials to ignore the mounting death toll in the country from attacks that Islamabad alleges have originated in Afghanistan.
The Centre for Research and Security Studies (CRSS), an Islamabad-based think tank, put the number of deaths of Pakistan’s security personnel at more than 2,400 in the first three quarters of this year, which is on track to become the deadliest year in a decade.
Basit said that Islamabad is trying to define a new normal in which any attack believed to have originated in Afghanistan – whether by the TTP or another group – will carry a cost for Kabul.
“Any attack which emanates from Afghanistan will be responded [to] with [the] same ferocity on their territory, with Pakistan implying that Afghan Taliban are facilitating such attacks in Pakistan, and thus are legitimate targets,” he said.
Basit acknowledged that Pakistan’s new approach appears similar to what New Delhi adopted against Islamabad after the April attack in Indian-administered Kashmir, but said there was a key difference. Regardless of the casualties on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border during the past weekend’s clashes, the military asymmetry between the two sides is significant, unlike the scenario between India and Pakistan.
He pointed to Pakistan’s ability to hit back against India’s attacks in May: Pakistan was able to shoot down several Indian jets in the process. The Taliban, however, though battle-hardened fighters who have a long history of repelling foreign powers, do not have the equipment and training that Pakistan’s professional army does. “There is a difference,” Basit said.
Aamer Raza, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Peshawar, said there was a growing feeling within Pakistani policy circles that patience with Afghanistan was wearing thin in the Pakistani establishment.
“Although some engagement is inevitable, major breakthroughs shouldn’t immediately be expected. With Pakistan’s clear superiority in air and projectile warfare, even in the last clashes, it could have inflicted greater damage on Afghanistan, but it largely refrained,” he told Al Jazeera.
After the weekend clashes, Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for the first time, also questioned the legitimacy of the Taliban government itself, even though Islamabad was the movement’s chief patron for a quarter of a century.
Pakistan demanded “concrete and verifiable actions against these terrorist elements by the Taliban regime” and urged a more inclusive government. “We also hope that one day, the Afghan people would be emancipated, and they would be governed by a true representative government,” the statement read.
Baloch, the diplomat, downplayed that language, suggesting that Islamabad was merely calling for elections in Afghanistan.
Basit, however, argued that the wording was significant. “This language of the statement also hints that Pakistan might be open to the idea of throwing its support behind anti-Taliban groups if the current regime continues to ignore Pakistan’s legitimate security concerns,” he said.
The New Delhi factor
The weekend’s clashes also coincided with Muttaqi’s first visit to India. He is, in fact, the first senior Taliban leader to travel to New Delhi since the group took control of Afghanistan four years ago.
Muttaqi received a temporary United Nations-sanctions exemption to travel for a week, from October 9 to 16, and met Indian Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar.
Kabul’s moves towards New Delhi also represent the culmination of months of diplomacy that Pakistan has watched closely.
From the mid-1990s until a few years ago, India viewed the Taliban as a proxy for Pakistan’s intelligence agencies, and accused the group and its allies of deadly attacks on its diplomatic missions in Afghanistan.
But since the group returned to power in Afghanistan, and amid rising Taliban-Pakistan tensions, India has engaged in a series of outreach efforts with Kabul’s new leaders, leading to Muttaqi’s visit.
Islamabad continues to allege that New Delhi is fomenting trouble in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces, and that some groups are funded or supported by New Delhi from Afghan territory, charges that India has consistently rejected.
Now, with tensions on both its western and eastern fronts, Islamabad needs to stay cautious, said Baloch, the former ambassador.
“No country can afford to open war fronts on all its borders, and that goes for Pakistan also,” she said.
Meanwhile, some analysts have questioned Pakistan’s posture of neither accepting responsibility for last Thursday’s explosions in Afghanistan, nor denying a role.
This could damage Pakistan’s credibility if groups based in Afghanistan attack Pakistan again, suggested Fahad Nabeel, who leads the Islamabad-based research consultancy Geopolitical Insights.
“The main question will be why Pakistani officials did not claim responsibility for the past alleged strikes [in Afghanistan, in response to attacks in Pakistan]. If Pakistan merely uses the terrorism-threat narrative, critics will ask why it did not take such actions in the past decade,” Nabeel told Al Jazeera.
However, Nabeel said that he did not see major parallels between India’s response to the April attack and Pakistan’s recent approach towards the Taliban. “The only commonalities,” he said, lay in both India and Pakistan accusing its neighbours, Pakistan and Afghanistan, of not doing enough to stop UN-sanctioned individuals and groups from using their soil to attack others.
Singapore-based Basit said that Pakistan’s air strikes during Muttaqi’s visit were likely intended to send a message: that “Islamabad will not hesitate to use force if it perceives collusion between Kabul and New Delhi to undermine Pakistani security”.
However, like Baloch, Basit also acknowledged the limits of that posture. “No country can afford a two-front war,” he said.
Basit also said that bigger questions about Islamabad’s approach remained unanswered.
“What really is the end game here?” he asked.
“Are these strikes going to change the calculus of [the] Afghan Taliban to pushing them into action against the TTP, or will it drive them to forge a closer nexus with [the] TTP?” he asked.
“When you use force, you are using it to achieve [a] certain goal, and the question is, what does Pakistan want to achieve with these air strikes?”
new video loaded: How Venezuelans Worldwide Reacted to Overthrow of Maduro
By McKinnon de Kuyper
January 4, 2026
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President Donald Trump late Sunday predicted Cuba was “ready to fall” after U.S. forces captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, warning that Havana can no longer rely on Caracas for security and oil.
Trump said Cuba’s fate is now directly tied to Maduro’s ouster and the collapse of Venezuela’s ability to bankroll allies in the region.
Asked if he was considering U.S. action in Cuba, Trump replied: “I think it’s just going to fall. I don’t think we need any action. Looks like it’s going down. It’s going down for the count.”
The president’s comments during a press gaggle with reporters aboard Air Force One come after Saturday’s capture of Maduro and his wife on charges tied to a narco-terrorism conspiracy. The audacious operation has sent shockwaves through allied governments in the region, with Cuban officials calling for rallies in support of Venezuela and accusing the U.S. of violating sovereignty.
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President Donald Trump speaks with reporters while in flight on Air Force One, Sunday, Jan. 4, 2026, as returning to Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
U.S. officials say Cuban security forces played a central role in keeping Maduro in power. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Cuban operatives effectively ran Venezuela’s internal intelligence and security operations – including personally guarding Maduro and monitoring loyalty inside his government.
Protestors rally outside the White House, Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026, in Washington, after the U.S. captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife in a military operation. (Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP Photo)
“It was Cubans that guarded Maduro,” Rubio said. “He was not guarded by Venezuelan bodyguards. He had Cuban bodyguards.”
Cuba’s government acknowledged Sunday that 32 Cuban military and police officers were killed during the American operation in Venezuela, marking the first official death toll released by Havana. Cuban state media said the officers had been deployed at the request of Caracas and announced two days of national mourning.
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Trump confirmed Cuban casualties while traveling back to Washington.
“A lot of Cubans were killed yesterday,” he said. “There was a lot of death on the other side. No death on our side.”
Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores face ‘worst case scenario’ in U.S. custody, according to expert, with federal indictments on drug and weapons charges. ( Juan BARRETO / AFP via Getty Images)
Trump also took aim at neighboring Colombia, accusing its leadership of fueling drug trafficking into the U.S.
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“Colombia is very sick, run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States,” Trump said, adding that the country, “is not going to be doing it for a very long time.”
President of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro speaks during a military ceremony commemorating the 200th anniversary of the presentation of the ‘Sword of Peru’ to Venezuelan independence hero Simón Bolívar on November 25, 2025, in Caracas, Venezuela. (Jesus Vargas/Getty Images)
He suggested the U.S. was prepared to act against narco-trafficking networks operating by land and sea, citing recent interdictions.
Trump also revived his long-standing focus on Greenland, arguing the Arctic territory is critical to U.S. security amid growing Russian and Chinese activity.
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“We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security,” Trump said. “Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place.”
Trump has framed Saturday’s operation as part of a broader effort to reassert U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere, invoking the Monroe Doctrine and warning that hostile regimes can no longer rely on one another for survival.
Maduro is set to be arraigned in federal court in New York on Monday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Washington, DC – Hours after the United States announced the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Israeli politician Yair Lapid issued a warning to Tehran: “The regime in Iran should pay close attention to what is happening in Venezuela.”
The forcible removal of Maduro from power came less than a week after US President Donald Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and threatened to launch new strikes against Iran.
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Although Washington’s tensions with Caracas and Tehran have different roots and dynamics, analysts say Trump’s move against Maduro raises the prospects of war with Iran.
“A new lawlessness makes everything less stable and war more likely,” said Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC).
“Whether Trump becomes enamoured with ‘surgical’ regime change, or gives Netanyahu a US imprimatur for similar actions, it’s hard not to see how this gives momentum for the many actors pushing for renewed war with Iran.”
He added that Maduro’s abduction could prompt Iran “to do something that triggers military action”, including developing its own military deterrence or preempting US or Israeli strikes.
Negar Mortazavi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, also said the US actions in Venezuela show Trump’s maximalist aims, further dimming the chances of diplomacy.
“What I see and hear from Tehran is that they are not interested in negotiating with the Trump administration the way this administration signals that they want total surrender,” Mortazavi told Al Jazeera.
“So, not much chance for diplomacy at the moment, which then opens the path to the opposite road, that is conflict. Right now, Israel, Iran and the US are on a path to potential conflict.”
Abdi echoed that assessment. “This action reinforces every doubt and suspicion about US intentions, and gives more credence to those in Iran who say engaging the US is useless and [that] developing a nuclear deterrent is vital,” he told Al Jazeera.
Iran-Venezuela alliance
The US raid that abducted Maduro and brought him to the US came after months of intensifying rhetoric from Trump against the Venezuelan government.
US officials have accused Maduro of leading a drug organisation, and Trump and his aides have been increasingly arguing that Washington is entitled to Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also been emphasising Maduro’s ties to Iran, accusing Caracas, without evidence, of providing the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah a foothold in the Western Hemisphere.
Maduro is a close ally of Iran, and the two heavily sanctioned countries have been pushing to deepen their trade ties, which are estimated to be in the billions of dollars.
So, with Maduro gone, Iran’s small network of allies may shrink further, after the fall of leader Bashar al-Assad in Syria and the weakening of Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The Iranian government was quick to condemn the US attack on Venezuela, calling on the United Nations to intervene and halt the “unlawful aggression”.
“The US military aggression against an independent state that is a member of the UN represents a grave breach of regional and international peace and security,” the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
“Its consequences affect the entire international system and will further expose the UN Charter-based order to erosion and destruction.”
On Saturday, Rubio suggested that Maduro’s abduction carried a message to all of Washington’s rivals in the Trump era.
“When he tells you that he’s going to do something, when he tells you he’s going to address a problem, he means it,” the top US diplomat told reporters.
But Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei doubled down on his defiant rhetoric after the US raid in Caracas.
“We will not give in to the enemy,” Khamenei wrote in a social media post. “We will bring the enemy to its knees.”
Trump’s threats
Last week, Trump hosted Netanyahu in Florida and threatened to bomb Iran again if the country rebuilds its missile or nuclear programmes.
“Now I hear that Iran is trying to build up again, and if they are, we’re going to have to knock them down,” Trump said. “We’ll knock them down. We’ll knock the hell out of them.”
Israel launched a war against Iran in June, killing the country’s top military commanders, several nuclear scientists and hundreds of civilians.
The US joined in the attack, bombing Iran’s three main nuclear sites.
While Trump has often reiterated that the US strikes “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear programme and celebrated the war as a success, the Iranian governing system survived the assault.
Tehran responded with barrages of hundreds of rockets against Israel, dozens of which penetrated the country’s multi-layered air defences, and Iranian forces were able to keep firing until the final moments of the war, before the ceasefire came into effect.
Some critics argue that regime change was and remains Israel’s goal in Iran, and Trump appears to be increasingly buying into that objective.
On Friday, Trump warned that the US is “locked and loaded” and ready to attack Iran if the Iranian government kills protesters amid the ongoing but sporadic antigovernment demonstrations across the country.
He renewed the same threat late on Sunday. “If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they’re going to get hit very hard by the United States,” the US president said.
So, could the US carry out a Venezuela-style government decapitation in Iran?
NIAC’s Abdi noted that Israel has already tried to kill the country’s top leaders, including President Masoud Pezeshkian, in June.
Trump also repeatedly threatened Khamenei with assassination, and Israeli officials confirmed that they sought to “eliminate” the supreme leader during the war.
“Iranian officials have said they accordingly have plans in place so that killing or removing senior leaders does not paralyse or topple the regime,” Abdi said.
“It would be far messier to run a ‘snatch and grab’ operation on Iran, given their ability to retaliate against US interests and personnel.”
Venezuela without Maduro
Even in Venezuela, removing Maduro has not translated into a regime collapse, at least for now.
On Sunday, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, now Venezuela’s acting president, stressed that Maduro remains the country’s only leader and condemned the US attack.
She also suggested that Israel was involved in the abduction of Maduro, a vocal critic of the US ally.
“Governments around the world are shocked that the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has become the victim and target of an attack of this nature, which undoubtedly has Zionist undertones,” Rodriguez said.
Trump responded by threatening the acting Venezuelan president, telling The Atlantic magazine that she would pay a “very big price, probably bigger than Maduro” if she did not acquiesce to US demands.
So, the US president’s plans for “running” Venezuela and taking its oil are not complete yet, and will likely require more military action.
“I doubt Venezuela can be a ‘one and done’ or a quick ‘in and out’ situation, which is Trump’s favourite model. His brand is that he engages in quick shows of force, not forever wars,” Mortazavi said.
She cited swift operations that Trump has ordered, including the killing of ISIL (ISIS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2019, the assassination of top Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in 2020, and the attack on Iran’s nuclear sites in June.
“Most Americans are tired of forever wars, especially in the Middle East, so the Trump administration knows they can’t sell more forever wars to Americans,” Mortazavi said.
But Trump has already floated the prospect of a ground invasion of Venezuela.
“We’re not afraid of boots on the ground,” he said. “We don’t mind saying it, but we’re going to make sure that that country is run properly. We’re not doing this in vain.”
Abdi said that a long-term US involvement in Venezuela could indirectly stave off war with Iran.
“There is also the possibility that the US gets bogged down in ‘running’ Venezuela and doesn’t have the bandwidth to wage, or to support Israel launching, the next Iran war,” he told Al Jazeera.
“Iran was next on the menu after the US invaded Iraq in 2003, and we know what happened there, and Trump may not want to pronounce ‘mission accomplished’ just yet.”
The oil question
Still, some critics – including Republican US Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene – have argued that if the US succeeds in controlling Venezuela’s oil resources, it will be able to offset energy market disruptions from a possible war with Iran.
“The next obvious observation is that, by removing Maduro, this is a clear move for control over Venezuelan oil supplies that will ensure stability for the next obvious regime change war in Iran,” Greene wrote on X on Saturday.
About 20 percent of the world’s oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran may push to shut down in the case of an all-out war.
Abdi said that Venezuelan oil “could theoretically provide some cushion” to the loss of exports from the Gulf region.
“But this would mean a lot of things going right for the US in Venezuela, and it is probably far too soon to make that judgement,” he said.
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