A week after a suspected Pakistani airstrike in Kabul targeted Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Noor Wali Mehsud, the militant leader appeared in a video message on Thursday, declaring he was alive. The development risks reignite the most serious confrontation between Islamabad and Kabul in decades.
The October 9 strike, which hit an armoured Land Cruiser believed to be carrying Noor Wali Mehsud, had triggered a chain of retaliatory attacks and fierce exchanges across the border before a fragile ceasefire took hold mid-week.
Pakistan has been accusing Afghanistan of harbouring the TTP leadership and providing safe havens to militants blamed for near-daily attacks on Pakistani security forces.
“Jihad brings nations freedom and dignity; otherwise they remain slaves,” Mehsud said in the video, denying reports of his death.
Watch the video here:
Afghan officials, however, continue to deny that Pakistani militants are operating from their soil, accusing Islamabad in turn of backing the local Islamic State affiliate.
The strike, Pakistan’s first reported hit inside Kabul since the 2022 US operation that killed al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri, has brought tensions between the two neighbours to a breaking point.
Wednesday’s fighting along the volatile, contested frontier shattered a fragile peace after dozens were killed in weekend clashes, the worst between the two Islamic countries since the Taliban seized power in Kabul in 2021.
Earlier on Wednesday, Pakistan carried out an airstrike on the Afghan border province of Kandahar and hit the town of Spin Boldak, officials in both countries said.
Pakistani security officials said the airstrike had targeted a brigade of Afghan Taliban troops and that dozens were killed, without corroborating the claim.
Pakistan’s military has vowed to “do whatever is necessary” to safeguard its people, warning Afghanistan to prevent the use of its territory for terrorism.
For Kabul’s Taliban administration, the airstrikes mark what it called an “unprecedented and provocative act”, with the Afghan defence ministry cautioning that “the consequences will be the responsibility of the Pakistani military.”
Islamabad has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement in the operation, but senior officials have hinted that its patience with Kabul is “wearing thin.”
Who is Noor Wali Mehsud?
- Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud, born on June 26, 1978, in South Waziristan’s Mehsud tribal heartland, is both a cleric and a seasoned commander, according to The Diplomat.
- A madrassa-trained Islamic jurist, Mehsud fought alongside the Afghan Taliban in the 1990s before rising through the ranks of the Pakistani Taliban as a judge, Karachi chief, and later deputy to successive TTP leaders.
- He became the group’s chief in June 2018, following the US drone killing of Mullah Fazlullah, restoring leadership to the Mehsud tribe, the faction that had founded the movement.
- An ideologue as much as a militant, Mehsud is the author of several books, including Inqilab-e-Mehsud (The Mehsud Revolution), a 700-page text blending theology, tribal history, and militant narrative. The book explicitly claims responsibility for the assassination of former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto in 2007.
- Under his leadership, the TTP regrouped after years of military setbacks and internal rifts, consolidating splinter factions and shifting tactics to target primarily security forces rather than civilians, a strategic recalibration that analysts say has made the group more resilient and harder to dismantle.
- Following the Taliban’s 2021 takeover in Afghanistan, Mehsud’s TTP gained new operational depth, with freer movement across the border and access to weapons.
- To Pakistan’s military, Mehsud is a fugitive terrorist responsible for hundreds of killings and cross-border raids.
(With inputs from Reuters)
