Pakistan Is Running Out of Fuel While Fighting a War It Cannot Afford

Petrol stations across Islamabad and Rawalpindi started turning away drivers on Friday. Shell and PSO outlets rationed sales to eight or ten litres per vehicle. Aramco and Attock stations ran dry entirely. Long queues of cars and motorcycles stretched onto main roads by evening, and scuffles broke out at some locations in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

This is what war looks like when the fuel runs out.

Pakistan is now fighting on day 15 of its declared "open war" with Afghanistan while staring down a fuel crisis it did not plan for. The government hiked petrol prices by Rs 55 per litre on Friday night -- the largest single increase in recent memory. Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb told parliament the country holds 28 days of petrol and diesel, 10 days of crude oil, and 15 days of LPG. He insisted there was "no shortage." The queues in Islamabad told a different story.

The battlefield

Friday was the deadliest day yet along the 2,600-kilometre border. Both sides launched multiple cross-border strikes and claimed dozens of enemy troops killed. Afghanistan's Defence Ministry said Taliban forces hit Pakistani military installations in more than two dozen locations across Nangarhar, Kandahar, Kunar, Paktia, and Khost provinces. Kabul claimed 14 Pakistani border posts destroyed and a drone shot down.

Pakistan's state media countered that the air force and ground troops "inflicted heavy losses" on Afghan forces and TTP positions. Islamabad gave no numbers. A suicide car bomber struck a security post in North Waziristan on the same day, killing one civilian and wounding 18. No one claimed the attack, but suspicion fell immediately on the TTP.

The UN, Turkey, China, and at least eight other countries have called for a ceasefire. None of it worked. The fighting hasn't stopped.

115,000 displaced and counting

The UN refugee agency updated its displacement figure on Thursday: 115,000 Afghans and roughly 3,000 Pakistanis forced from their homes since the fighting began. UNAMA reported 56 Afghan civilians killed, with nearly half being children. The real number is likely higher. The Taliban has restricted journalists from photographing strike sites, and Pakistan's military releases casualty figures selectively.

Afghanistan was already one of the world's worst humanitarian crises before the first bombs fell. The 2026 UN appeal was underfunded by billions. Now 115,000 newly displaced people need shelter, food, and medical care. The health system barely functions. Winter hasn't let go of the eastern highlands.

The fuel trap

Pakistan's fuel crisis isn't a coincidence. It's geography and timing colliding.

The Strait of Hormuz -- through which Pakistan imports nearly all of its oil -- has been effectively shut for a week. Iran closed the strait in retaliation for US and Israeli strikes, and no commercial tanker has transited in the past 24 hours. Brent crude closed Friday at $92.69, up 28% for the week. Qatar's energy minister warned it could hit $150 if the closure persists.

Pakistan can't fight a border war and absorb a fuel shock at the same time. Every military vehicle, every aircraft sortie, every supply convoy burns fuel that isn't being replaced. The government is considering work-from-home mandates and online school to conserve supplies. Oil marketing companies have quietly imposed quota systems on petrol stations, limiting deliveries.

This is the connection between the Iran war and the Afghanistan-Pakistan war that most global coverage misses. They are not separate conflicts. Pakistan's defence minister, Khawaja Asif, spelled it out himself this week: regime change in Iran could align Tehran, India, and Afghanistan against Pakistan, "turning Pakistan into a vassal state surrounded by enemies on all sides."

The mediation vacuum

Every potential mediator is either too busy or too damaged to help.

Saudi Arabia, which brokered the October 2025 ceasefire between Islamabad and Kabul, is now absorbing Iranian retaliatory missile strikes and rerouting its own oil exports through the Red Sea. Qatar, the other key broker, intercepted two waves of Iranian missiles this week. Turkey's President Erdogan offered to mediate on March 4 in a call with Prime Minister Sharif. Nothing came of it.

China met with the Taliban's foreign minister on March 4 and "offered to play a role in de-escalation," according to the Council on Foreign Relations. But Beijing has kept its distance from material involvement.

Russia offered to mediate. So did Bangladesh, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Malaysia, and Uzbekistan. The list of countries calling for a ceasefire is long. The list of countries with any ability to deliver one is empty.

The October 2025 ceasefire — brokered in Doha, extended in Istanbul, backed by Saudi mediation — collapsed in late 2025. The mediators are consumed by their own crises. The core dispute hasn't moved an inch: Pakistan wants the Taliban to hand over TTP fighters. The Taliban won't.

The strategic vice

India launched a major air force exercise near the Pakistani border this week, running through March 12. Indian media's covering Pakistan's "double whammy" with barely concealed satisfaction. Indian analysts frame both wars as threats that weaken Pakistan and strengthen Delhi.

Pakistan now faces pressure from three directions: active combat on the Afghan border, a fuel crisis from the Hormuz closure, and an Indian military watching from the east.

Defence analysts in Islamabad describe this as "strategic backburning" -- the theory that Pakistan launched its Afghan operation partly to demonstrate anti-Taliban credentials to Washington, avoiding being linked to Iran while the US struck Tehran. If that was the calculation, it may have bought diplomatic cover at the cost of strategic coherence.

The war's in its third week with no off-ramp visible. Fuel reserves are counting down. Displacement is accelerating. The mediators who stopped the last war are fighting their own.

Pakistan chose this fight. It can't choose the timing of everything else.