RASC News Agency: The civilian death toll from the latest border clashes between Taliban forces and the Pakistani military in the Spin Boldak district of Kandahar province has risen to at least 40 killed and 171 injured, according to local medical officials and humanitarian sources. The escalating violence has once again underscored the Taliban’s catastrophic failure to maintain national security and protect Afghanistan’s frontiers.
Local health officials told RASC News that many of the wounded remain in critical condition, with makeshift hospitals overwhelmed and emergency supplies running dangerously low. “Several villages near the border have not yet been reached,” said a medic at the Spin Boldak District Hospital. “We fear many more bodies are still trapped under the rubble.”
Preliminary figures released by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) earlier on Thursday reported at least 17 civilians dead and 346 injured, but local sources insist the real toll is considerably higher. The discrepancy highlights the opacity of Taliban-controlled institutions, which have been accused of systematically concealing the extent of civilian casualties to maintain a façade of authority.
Zubair Agha, a Taliban-appointed district health director, told BBC Pashto that the casualty numbers might rise, though observers note that the Taliban’s statements are often politically sanitized and strategically ambiguous, designed to deflect responsibility rather than acknowledge the scale of civilian suffering.
On Wednesday, Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s chief spokesman, downplayed the devastation, claiming that “12 people were killed and over 100 wounded” in Pakistani airstrikes on Spin Boldak. His statement was met with outrage from residents and analysts alike, who denounced it as another example of the regime’s habitual deception and its disregard for human life.
According to eyewitnesses, the border clashes began late Saturday night after Taliban fighters fired artillery toward Pakistani positions, prompting retaliatory air and ground attacks by the Pakistani military. Islamabad later accused the Taliban of “reckless aggression,” while the Taliban regime itself lacking international legitimacy claimed it was “defending Afghanistan’s sovereignty.”
Yet experts say these claims ring hollow. The incident, they argue, exposes the Taliban’s political fragility and strategic incompetence, as the group struggles to manage its increasingly tense relationship with Pakistan a nation that once served as its principal patron. What was once described as an “all-weather alliance” between Islamabad and the Taliban has devolved into a volatile confrontation driven by mistrust, cross-border militancy, and the collapse of diplomatic mechanisms.
A 48-hour ceasefire was declared late Wednesday evening after intense exchanges of fire, though local residents describe the truce as “fragile and meaningless.” Villagers in Spin Boldak told RASC News that Taliban fighters have withdrawn from several checkpoints, leaving civilians exposed and terrified amid fears of renewed bombing.
“The Taliban keep saying they brought security, but they cannot even protect our children,” said Abdul Rahim, a shopkeeper in Spin Boldak. “Pakistan bombs us, and the Taliban only make statements on television. We are caught between two armies both of them treating us as expendable.”
Analysts believe the Taliban’s inability to secure Afghanistan’s borders and their ongoing clashes with neighboring Pakistan could further deepen the country’s international isolation. While the regime continues to boast about its control and “stability,” incidents like Spin Boldak reveal a government that governs by slogans rather than strategy, allowing Afghanistani civilians to pay the ultimate price for its failures.
Human rights advocates have also voiced alarm over the growing humanitarian crisis in southern Afghanistan, where thousands of displaced families now lack food, medical care, and shelter. “The Taliban have neither the capacity nor the credibility to respond to this kind of disaster,” said an analyst with a Kabul-based humanitarian organization. “They are militarily reactive and administratively paralyzed. What Spin Boldak shows is not resistance it’s ruin.”
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s military has maintained its stance that it acted in “defensive response” to Taliban provocations. Yet both sides continue to weaponize the border for political leverage, with ordinary Afghanistanis impoverished, voiceless, and forgotten trapped in the crossfire.
For the people of Spin Boldak, the 48-hour ceasefire means little more than a temporary pause in terror. Nightfall brings with it the same uncertainty the sound of distant artillery, the flicker of shattered homes, and the haunting silence of a population left without protection, abandoned under two failing regimes.
