"Apart from the Taliban, they're now bombing us in Kabul, but nobody cares about us anymore."

KabulIt was almost ten o’clock at night, when two explosions tore through the silence of Kabul. The sound was so fierce that I froze heart pounding, breath caught in my chest. For a moment, I thought the war had found its way back. I ran through the house calling my family’s names. When I saw them safe, I felt my knees weaken with relief. Outside, the city was still too quiet, as if Kabul itself was holding its breath.

I turned on my VPN and scrolled through Facebook. From Kher Khana to Taimani, from Shahr-e-Now to Dasht-e-Barchi, everyone had heard it the same deafening blast, the same confusion. Some said maybe the Americans were back. Others feared a new war. Then came the truth: it wasn’t the U.S. it was Pakistan.

That night, as I read the news of airstrikes on Kabul and Paktika, I felt something break inside me. For years, we feared enemies among us. Now the danger had come from the skyand once again, Kabul was trembling.

The latest clashes began at the border. Taliban forces attacked Pakistani checkpoints across six provinces along the Durand Line in response to repeated Pakistani strikes on Afghan border areas. Gradually, the conflict extended beyond the border until the Pakistani airstrikes reached Kabul.

Thick smoke blanketed the city; many initially assumed it was a fire accident. Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesperson, claimed that a “fuel tanker” had exploded and urged citizens not to worry. But I did worry. I was standing on my balcony, staring at the rising smoke, and deep inside, I couldn’t believe what they were saying. Over the past three years, we had learned not to trust official statements too often, they came late or twisted.

Hours later, the Taliban confirmed the airstrikes. The bombs had struck parts of Kabul where civilians were living ordinary lives, and Nangarhar and Kandahar provinces have been also targeted. According to local and international sources, at least 64 people were killed and over 619 injured in war and Pakistani airstrikes across Afghanistan. Most of the victims were civilians, including women and children.

That day, the Taliban didn’t allow anyone to visit the site of the attack. But the next morning, I went there myself to see what had become of those homes. I saw a house whose roof had collapsed. It was once the bedroom of a young girl who used to study there. That day, she and her family were not home, a miracle, but their house no longer existed. It was now just a pile of bricks and twisted metal. Next to it stood a small private school. Its windows were shattered, and bomb fragments had scarred the outer walls. Almost every nearby house had broken windows; many of the wounded were those hit by shards of flying glass. In other parts of Kabul, the scene was much the same: children with their eyes wide with fear, men digging through the rubble with bare hands, silent but with faces heavy with despair. One of them told me quietly: “We had pinned our hopes on the Taliban’s peace, but now we face Pakistan’s bombs”.

A false sense of security

When the Taliban returned to power three years ago, they promised us “security.” And for a while, it felt real. The bombings stopped, the kidnappings faded, and nights in Kabul grew quieter. I remember thinking maybe, just maybe, we could breathe again, even if it was under silence and control.

During the years of the Americans, helicopters filled the air, but the danger never came from Pakistan. Now, for the first time, I feel that the fear above us comes from across the border from a country that has always stood somewhere between our enemy and our dependence.

The relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan has always been tangled in suspicion. We grew up hearing that Pakistan had a hand in every war that tore our country apart, and yet, for survival, we still turn to it. Afghanistan’s health system has nearly collapsed. My father had to take my uncle to Peshawar for treatment. Like thousands of others, they waited for hours outside the Pakistani embassy, hoping for a visa that felt more like a mercy than a right. Many can’t get one at all, they buy it on the black market, paying more than they earn in months.

A friend of mine lived in Karachi for years. He had all the legal papers, but one night police raided their neighbourhood. They accused him of being “an illegal Afghan,” beat him, and threw him across the border like he was nothing. When I met him again in Kabul, his hands still trembled. It’s the cruellest irony, we flee to Pakistan to survive, yet even there, we are treated as if we don’t deserve to live.

Sometimes I wonder if the world has simply stopped hearing us. The bombs that fell on Kabul in October didn’t just break walls, they broke the illusion that peace had finally come. I saw children pulled from under the rubble, women screaming the names of their loved ones, lives cut short in seconds. And yet, beyond our borders, the international media barely published any news about the attacks.

Every night, when the sky turns dark over Kabul, I look up and wonder if the next explosion will come. The fear has become part of our lives, quiet, constant, unspoken. What hurts most is not just the sound of bombs, but the silence that follows, the silence of a world that no longer seems to care.