By Khalid Ahrar
In the final days of April 2026, Pakistani forces launched deadly missile and mortar strikes from their own territory into Kunar province, hitting the provincial capital Asadabad and surrounding areas. According to Islamic Emirate officials, including Deputy Government Spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat and Kunar’s Director of Information and Culture Najibullah Hanafi, the attacks martyred seven people and wounded more than 85 others. Among the injured were women, children, and university students.
One of the strikes hit Syed Jamaluddin Afghani University directly. Around 30 students and faculty members were wounded, and the university’s facilities were badly damaged. Residential homes were also struck, the educational process brought to a halt, and across Kunar, dozens of schools were affected, leaving thousands of children unable to attend class. Pakistani officials dismissed the reports as “baseless and fabricated,” insisting they only target “terrorist objectives.” The IEA called the strikes “indiscriminate” and a war crime committed against civilians.
These attacks are the latest in a sustained cycle of violence between Afghanistan and Pakistan that has been unfolding in successive waves since February 2026, repeatedly hitting civilian areas, homes, and educational institutions.
Targeting civilians and places of learning is something we have seen before. It bears an unmistakable resemblance to what Zionist forces do. Pakistani forces are intentionally striking the homes, schools, and universities of ordinary Afghans, and the parallel with the Zionist regime’s conduct is not a stretch. Just as Israel bombs hospitals, schools, universities, and civilian neighborhoods in Gaza and then calls them “Hamas targets,” Pakistan bombs Afghan educational institutions and homes under the cover of “terrorist-linked centers,” with children, women, and students paying the price.
Zionists target Palestinian educational and cultural institutions to sever generations from their roots and break the will to resist. Pakistan does the same in Kunar and other eastern provinces, striking learning centers and leaving thousands of students cut off from knowledge and light. Both pursue an identical goal: to destroy the educational and social fabric of Muslims and to spread fear among civilians.
For the Zionist project and its backers, schools and universities are “terrorist nests.” In reality, they are where the next generation learns to think, to question, to grow. The Pakistani regime applies the same twisted logic when it targets institutions like Syed Jamaluddin Afghani University, a place named after one of Islam’s great reformers. These are not just war crimes. They are a systematic assault on Afghan identity and on Afghanistan’s future, carried out with the same cold deliberateness as the atrocities the Zionist regime commits in Gaza and across Palestine.
The Afghan people must stand united in awareness and resistance against both of these oppressive regimes. Their tactics are one and the same: the killing of civilians and the destruction of educational centers.
