The Taliban government has reported that it has repulsed a gun battle from Pakistan, and this time the numbers were accompanied by the same assurance. A team of fighters, comprising Islamic State terrorists who crossed from Pakistan, had been killed and wounded by the country's defence forces in Nuristan province on Sunday, the defence ministry said.

The ministry stated that most of the fighters were former security personnel of the Afghan government with the backing of Pakistani militias. Just the count is unclear. The Washington Post reported 28 dead and 32 captured, and other news sources used the term "wounded. It's a story that was a week in the making and out of the press just a day ago and it's no stranger to having three versions.

The Taliban's side of the story is like this: The group was in a district called Kamdesh near the Pakistani border on Saturday, with the intention of attacking; survivors fled back to positions held by the Pakistani militias. Kabul took it a step further, claiming that the men were trained and brought in by the Pakistani intelligence service. Images of over a dozen men saying they received a half day to several days of weapon training at a camp in Pakistan were pushed as evidence on social media.

Islamabad responded almost immediately. The information ministry of Pakistan has denied involvement in any clashes at the town of Nuristan by its security forces or intelligence agency including former Afghan security personnel. It said the video didn't reveal anything of relevance regarding the link between them and Pakistan, and there was no proof provided by Kabul. Pakistani commentators also attacked wire-service reporting for carrying the Taliban's allegations, while conceding it could make no "verification" of those claims. That's fair and it holds true for Islamabad's casualty figures as well.

A third voice should be mentioned. The armed opposition group that has been battling the Taliban denied Kabul's claims, alleging that it repelled a Taliban infantry and drone attack, killing five Taliban security personnel. If that is true at all, then Nuristan is not a Pakistani movement, it's an insurgency within Pakistan, which the government at Kabul is convenient to label as foreign. Anti-Taliban groups are alive and kicking in Afghanistan, but they are weak and not a serious threat to the Taliban control of territory. An unstable regime in its own eastern part has reasons for its belligerence in the direction of the other side.

It's the time that's the context. A second week of airstrikes, cross-border attacks, targeted operations and a car bombing were reported in the Long War Journal's weekly tracker. Pakistan hit 10 targets in Afghanistan on 24 September, claiming they were for drone strikes, but only four people died, the Taliban said, and they denied there was any drone campaign.

A UN appeal for confirmation of three civilian casualties came in connection with earlier strikes, which Islamabad claimed had resulted in the deaths of 28 militants. Two casualty figures for every incident and two narratives for each incident, no arbiter. This pattern is by no means new. The October 2025 fighting was brought to a halt under Qatari and Turkish mediation, but this agreement obviously didn't last.

The argument which sparked the whole controversy lies behind the dispute. The Taliban authorities are accused by Pakistan of supporting the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan that has been conducting attacks inside Pakistan for decades. The Taliban claim it's not true. Islamabad, in turn, employs the term "Fitna al-Hindustan" to refer to some of the militants it is battling against with a suggestion that they are of Indian origin. This is no finding, rather it is a claim, which is why this scuffle is closely followed in New Delhi.

Where both governments ought to be focusing is on the money, Prior to border closure, bilateral trade was approximately $2 billion per year. The Torkham crossing was closed and the Khyber Chamber of Commerce estimates Pakistan's losses to be around $2.5 billion, comprising $1.644 billion in export revenues and $817 million in import costs.

As you can see in the chart above, that comes out to about two-thirds exports, with one-third coming from imports. In January, the estimated losses for the exporters were at least Rs50 billion or equivalent to approximately $177 million a month, and 12,000 containers were stuck. The traders stated that the damage might be permanent because it is a lifeline to Central Asia and even to Russia.

Pakistan's pain is not the only pain. Pakistan supplies more than 60 per cent medicines to Afghanistan and every year Pakistan exports medicines worth $200 million to Afghanistan. In response, the Taliban put an end to trade of Pakistani drugs and tried to diversify it toward India, Iran and others. It's an opportunity for India.

Any truck that fails to pass through Torkham is another opportunity for Kabul to develop alternatives via Iran and central Asia and Indian exporters of drugs, tea, and machinery will feel the void caused by their Pakistani counterparts. But caution is the view to retain of an Afghanistan towed toward India by Pakistan is not the same as an Afghanistan that is stable, solvent and reliable as a customer.

The questions are worldwide the same. From this border, Washington, Beijing, Moscow and the Gulf demand two things: no safe haven for jihadist groups and an open trade corridor with the Central Asian region. Neither is being delivered and the same applies to the other. For Pakistan, which is still dependent on foreign loans and lacks export income, it is too expensive to be unable to run a market that used to import $2 billion worth of goods. The Taliban too will not be able to soak it up: They have no access to the banking system and rely on remittances and transit fees.