Bajaur Campaign

Relations between the two states of Afghanistan and Pakistan have been strained ever since the latter gained independence from the United Kingdom following the Partition of British India in August 1947. Following partition, the Kingdom of Afghanistan was the only country to vote against the Dominion of Pakistan's admission into the United Nations as a recognized sovereign state.[8] After the independence of Pakistan, Afghanistan operated agents who operated in north-western Pakistan, distributing large amounts of money, ammunition and even transistor radios in an effort to sway loyalties from locals Pakistanis to Afghanistan.[9]

Moreover, Afghanistan did not recognize the Durand Line that is the Pakistan–Afghanistan border (which Pakistan inherited from British India and which Afghanistan marked itself). Due to these large, illicit territorial claims over the western regions of Pakistan—roughly corresponding with the modern-day Pakistani provinces of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa—relations between the two countries soured, and Afghanistan started funding proxies and initiated regular skirmishes with Pakistan along the border.[10]

By 1948, Afghanistan was providing armaments and funding to proxies inside the Tirah and Razmak regions of northwest Pakistan. In the late 1950s, the Royal Afghan Army, with artillery support, attacked the Pakistani village of Dobandi and subsequently crossed the border and occupied a strategically vital railway link in Chaman−Quetta. The incursion prompted a large Pakistani offensive, following which the Pakistan Army retook the pass and pushed Afghan troops back to the border after a week of heavy fighting.[11]

Relations between the two states severely deteriorated in 1951, when Saad Akbar Babrak, an Afghan national, assassinated the then Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan, in Rawalpindi during a public rally. On 30 March 1955, Afghan demonstrators attacked and torched the Pakistani embassy in Kabul and consulates in Kandahar and Jalalabad, following which diplomatic relations were severed by Pakistan.[12] The areas surrounding Bajaur and other parts of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border saw extensive armed border skirmishes between Afghanistan and Pakistan from 1949 to 1971.

The Afghanistan-Pakistan border

Between 1960 and 1961, thousands of Pashtun tribesmen crossed the extremely porous Pakistan–Afghanistan border and entered the semi-autonomous Bajaur Agency of Pakistan in an effort to annex the region.[13] During this time, Afghanistan also deployed thousands of troops with tanks and artillery along the Afghanistan–Pakistan border and frequently attacked locally stationed soldiers from mountainous posts.[9]

The Pakistan Air Force crossed the Border with F-86 Sabre jets bombing military positions in Kunar province, leading Afghan forces to fall back to the international border.[2][14]

• Battle of Bajaur - Pakistani Military Operation in Bajaur district.
• Battle of Jalalabad
• Operation Khwakh Ba De Sham
• Operation Desert Hawk
• Operation Black Thunderstorm