Pakistan Airstrikes Inside Afghanistan Raise Sovereignty Questions | CLAT 2027

CURRENT AFFAIRS | 02 OCTOBER 2026

Pakistan airstrikes inside Afghanistan reopen questions of sovereignty and the use of force

On Thursday, 1 October 2026, Pakistan said it had killed at least 22 militants in air strikes inside Afghanistan as part of a campaign to eliminate what it described as cross-border hideouts. Afghanistan’s Taliban regime, however, said the Pakistani strikes killed nine Afghan civilians, including women and children, and injured eleven others. The sharply divergent accounts have revived long-standing legal and diplomatic questions about the use of force across an international frontier and the protection of civilians in armed conflict.

The prohibition on the use of force

The foundational rule of modern international law is set out in Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter, which prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. Cross-border air strikes that strike targets inside another country’s territory therefore raise an immediate question of whether they violate that state’s sovereignty. Sovereignty and non-intervention are cornerstones of the UN system, and the principle that a state’s territory is inviolable admits only narrow exceptions.

Self-defence and the Durand Line dispute

Pakistan accuses the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) of launching attacks from sanctuaries on Afghan soil, and frames its strikes as self-defence under Article 51. Afghanistan, which has historically refused to recognise the Durand Line — the 2,640-kilometre border drawn in 1893 during the colonial era — views such strikes as violations of its territorial sovereignty. The non-recognition of the Durand Line is a root cause of recurring bilateral tension and complicates any legal claim that the frontier has been crossed in self-defence.

The lawful exercise of self-defence under Article 51 is tightly circumscribed. International law generally requires that any use of force in self-defence be both necessary — that no peaceful alternative was reasonably available — and proportionate to the threat being met. It also contemplates that the matter be reported to the Security Council, which retains primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. Where a state strikes targets inside a neighbour against which it cannot establish a clear armed attack, or where the response is disproportionate, the claim of self-defence weakens and the conduct edges back towards a prohibited use of force under Article 2(4). These tests — necessity, proportionality and the primacy of the Security Council — are what courts and commentators use to judge episodes such as the present strikes.

Jus ad bellum versus jus in bello

For CLAT purposes, the episode usefully distinguishes two branches of international law. Jus ad bellum governs the right to resort to force in the first place — the domain of Articles 2(4) and 51. Jus in bello, or international humanitarian law, governs the conduct of hostilities once force is used, and protects civilians through instruments such as the Geneva Conventions. The competing claims here — militants killed versus civilians killed — map directly onto this distinction: the legality of launching the strikes is a jus ad bellum question, while the reported civilian deaths engage jus in bello.