Taking advantage of the west’s disengagement from the region, Pakistan has in recent months taken matters into its own hands and launched a series of air strikes across the border. More than 1,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the past three weeks of fighting between the two states, and over 100,000 people have been displaced. In the single bloodiest incident, 400 people were killed last week, Afghan officials say, in an air strike on a Kabul drug rehabilitation centre. Pakistan denies responsibility. The Taliban, just as unconvincingly, denies it shelters the militants who have been destabilising swaths of western Pakistan.