Bajaur Campaign

The Bajaur Campaign was an armed conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan that began in September 1960 and ended in September 1961. It primarily took place in and around Bajaur District in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

Hostilities broke out after Afghan prime minister Mohammad Daoud Khan, who was a vocal opponent of the international border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, sent in the Royal Afghan Army to back the local pro-Afghan Pashtun tribal chiefs who were opposed to the Pakistan-backed Nawab of Khar in the strategic regions in what is now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which Afghanistan considered to be an essential part of the Pashtun homeland. Ultimately, the Afghan invasion was brought to a halt following Pakistani airstrikes in Afghanistan's Kunar Province. The Bajaur Campaign may have been a proxy conflict of the Cold War, as it has been alleged that the Afghans and the Pakistanis were actively receiving support from the Soviet Union and the United States, respectively.

As a result of the Bajaur Campaign, Afghanistan–Pakistan relations deteriorated to an all-time low; their relationship had already been marred by tensions immediately after the creation of Pakistan in August 1947, as the Afghan government had been contesting the Durand Line, which Pakistan had inherited from British India. The two countries severed their diplomatic ties with each other and bilateral trade ceased for 18 months. Following Khan's forced resignation from the Afghan prime ministerial position, Afghanistan and Pakistan began talks for rapprochement in an effort that was jointly supervised by American president John F. Kennedy and Iranian King Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Khan later returned to power as Afghanistan's president through the 1973 coup d'état, marking the beginning of the ongoing Afghan conflict.