Switched Sides: How Pakistan's Omid Strike Exposes the "Unable or Unwilling" Doctrine

On the evening of March 16, 2026, Pakistan Air Force jets struck the Omid Drug Rehabilitation Center in Kabul, Afghanistan.[i]  The center holds 2,000-beds and is located on an old NATO base.[ii] Over a thousand patients were inside, many breaking their Ramadan fast, when three munitions hit the dining area, a dormitory, and a guard room.[iii] At least 143 people died, and over 250 were injured, mostly patients in drug treatment.[iv] Satellite images showed heavy damage but no weapons, military vehicles, or ammunition.[v] Pakistan's Information Minister called it a "precise, deliberate, and professional" strike against "military and terrorist infrastructure linked to hostile activity against Pakistan."[vi]

The “unable or unwilling” doctrine is a contested theory of self-defense holding that one state may use force on the territory of another without consent if the host state is “unable or unwilling” to suppress non-state armed groups operating from its territory.[vii] Article 51 of the UN Charter preserves “the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations.”[viii] Pakistan’s implicit legal justification rests on this doctrine: because Afghanistan's Taliban government won't stop the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a militant aiming to destabilize Pakistan, Pakistan believes it can defend itself under Article 51 of the UN Charter.[ix] However, the doctrine’s acceptance as customary international law remains controversial.[x] The doctrine mainly helps powerful nations at the expense of weaker ones.[xi] Pakistan’s attack on Omid fails for two reasons: the self-defense claim cannot survive ICJ precedent, and even if it did, the strike still violates International Humanitarian Law in ways self-defense cannot justify.[xii]

The ICJ's own rulings foreclose Pakistan's implicit position. In Nicaragua v. United States, the Court held that a host state must have direct control over specific operations to attribute an armed group’s actions to it.[xiii] Pakistan has not shown it meets this standard. The Taliban has denied any involvement with TTP, stating it is a homegrown Pakistani group predating their return to power.[xiv] The ICJ goes further in DRC v. Uganda. The Court dismissed Uganda's Article 51 claim not only because Congo lacked control over the rebels, but because Uganda also failed to notify the Security Council – treating this failure as one of several factors undermining Uganda’s self-defense claim.[xv] Pakistan has not submitted any Article 51 communication to the Security Council.[xvi] Pakistan did not explain the March 16 airstrike on the Omid Rehabilitation Center in Kabul.[xvii] Instead, it chose to deny the strike.[xviii] Further, on March 16, Pakistan struck a rehab center in Kabul. This center is about 150 miles from the border provinces where the UN has found TTP's main operations.[xix] Under the DRC decision, this failure would not a procedural issue, it is evidence of a weak self-defense claim by Pakistan.

The Omid strike still fails under International Humanitarian Law (“IHL”), and that failure is not legally contested. In the three weeks before Omid, Pakistani forces had already targeted over twenty Afghan healthcare facilities.[xx] Medical facilities receive heightened protection under the Fourth Geneva Convention and Additional Protocol I – including the Nuclear Weapons Advisory Opinion’s “cardinal” principles of distinction and proportionality.[xxi] They lose this protection only when used for harmful acts against the enemy, and only after a warning with reasonable time to comply. [xxii] Pakistan did not follow these norms – it struck a facility it knew to be a functioning civilian medical center; provided no warning; and denied the act.[xxiii] A state cannot invoke jus ad bellum ambiguity to excuse jus in bello violations. The lawfulness of Pakistan's self-defense claim does not affect whether the Omid strike complied with IHL.

What makes this worse is Pakistan's own record. Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has consistently characterized U.S. drone strikes as counter-productive, contrary to international law, and a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty and territorial integrity.[xxiv] Pakistan's own Parliament condemned those U.S. drone strikes as violations of international law and humanitarian norms.[xxv] When powerful states selectively invoke laws for their own interests, it doesn’t create genuine opinio juris.[xxvi] That was the correct argument. Pakistan has not found a better one; it has simply switched sides.

When a state that spent two decades criticizing a doctrine suddenly adopts it for convenience, it does not legitimize the doctrine. The doctrine remains what Pakistan labeled: counterproductive, and a breach of sovereignty.

The only change now is whose sovereignty is at stake.

Ume Kalsoom is a staff member of Fordham International Law Journal Volume XLIX.

[i] See Pakistan: Airstrike on Afghan Medical Facility Unlawful, Human Rights Watch (Mar. 27, 2026). https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/03/27/pakistan-airstrike-on-afghan-medical-facility-unlawful#:~:text=(New%20York)%20%E2%80%93%20A%20Pakistani,injured%2C%20most%20of%20them%20patients.

[ii] See id.

[iii] See id.

[iv] See id.

[v] See id. See also Qais Alamdar (@Qaisalamdar), Satellite imagery dated 29 January 2026 of the 2000-Bed Omid (Hope) rehabilitation centre indicates that most of the complex is now occupied . . ., X (Mar. 17, 2026, 7:30 AM), https://x.com/Qaisalamdar/status/2033868493464994070.

[vi] Alexandra Sharp, Kabul Accuses Pakistani Airstrike of Killing Over 400 People, Foreign Pol'y (Mar. 17, 2026). https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/03/17/afghanistan-taliban-pakistan-war-airstrike-camp-phoenix-drug-rehabilitation-center/

[vii] Ashley Deeks, 'Unwilling or Unable': Toward a Normative Framework for Extraterritorial Self-Defense, 52 Va. J. Int'l L. 483, 487 (2012).

[viii] U.N. Charter art. 51.

[ix] Deeks, supra at 486–87.

[x] See Jutta Brunnée & Stephen J. Toope, Self-Defence Against Non-State Actors: Are Powerful States Willing but Unable to Change International Law?, 67 Int'l & Comp. L.Q. 263, 276 (2018).

[xi] See generally Olivier Corten, The 'Unwilling or Unable' Test: Has It Been, and Could It Be, Accepted?, 29 Leiden J. Int'l L. 777 (2016) (The international community of states as a whole has not accepted this test in the Syrian case; such acceptance would change the jus contra bellum rules significantly, which most states likely aren’t ready for); See also Dawood I. Ahmed, Defending Weak States Against the ‘Unwilling or Unable’ Doctrine of Self-Defense, 9 J. Int’l L. & Int’l Rel. 1, 14–18 (2013) (arguing that Victim states using the "unwilling or unable" doctrine must share claims of ineffectiveness with the Security Council. The Council then decides with input from the Counter-Terrorism Committee).

[xii] See HRW, supra note 1; Amnesty Int’l, Strike on Kabul Rehabilitation Centre Raises Serious Concerns (Mar. 2026). https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/03/afghanistan-pakistan-strike-on-kabul-rehabilitation-centre-raises-serious-concerns-under-international-humanitarian-law/

[xiii] Military and Paramilitary Activities in and Against Nicaragua (Nicar. v. U.S.), 1984 I.C.J. 392, 436, ¶ 99 (Nov. 26).

[xiv] Pakistan: Responding to the Militant Surge on the Afghan Border, Int'l Crisis Grp., Rep. No. 354 (Feb. 27, 2026). https://www.crisisgroup.org/rpt/asia-pacific/pakistan-afghanistan/354-pakistan-responding-militant-surge-afghan-border.

[xv] Armed Activities on the Territory of the Congo (Dem. Rep. Congo v. Uganda), Judgment, 2005 I.C.J. 168 (Dec. 19, 2005).

[xvi] See Afghan–Pakistani Border: UN Experts Urgently Call for Lasting Peace, Off. of the U.N. High Comm'r for Hum. Rts. (Mar. 24, 2026), https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/03/afghan-pakistani-border-un-experts-urgently-call-lasting-peace.

[xvii] See HRW, supra note 1.

[xviii] See id.

[xix] See id; See also UN: Afghan Taliban Increase Support for Anti-Pakistan TTP Terrorists, Voice of Am. (July 11, 2024). https://www.voanews.com/a/un-afghan-taliban-increase-support-for-anti-pakistan-ttp-terrorists/7694324.html

[xx] See Afghan–Pakistani Border, supra note 16 (stating Omid lacked enough space to store bulk ammunition or propellants due to the amount and distance needed); see also Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, Advisory Opinion, 1996 I.C.J. 226, ¶ 78 (July 8) (identifying as "cardinal principles" of customary IHL: first, that States "must never make civilians the object of attack and must consequently never use weapons that are incapable of distinguishing between civilian and military targets"; and second, that unnecessary suffering must not be caused to combatants — rules the Court held constitute "intransgressible principles of international customary law").

[xxi] Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, Advisory Opinion, 1996 I.C.J. 226, ¶ 78 (July 8) (identifying as "cardinal principles" of customary IHL: first, that States "must never make civilians the object of attack and must consequently never use weapons that are incapable of distinguishing between civilian and military targets"; and second, that unnecessary suffering must not be caused to combatants — rules the Court held constitute "intransgressible principles of international customary law"). Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War art. 18, Aug. 12, 1949, 6 U.S.T. 3516, 75 U.N.T.S. 287; Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I) art. 12, June 8, 1977, 1125 U.N.T.S. 3.

[xxii] Geneva Convention IV, supra note 16, art. 19; Protocol I, supra note 16, art. 13.

[xxiii] See HRW, supra note 1; Amnesty Int’l, supra note 12.

[xxiv] See Statement of the Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights Following Meetings in Pakistan, U.N. Off. of the High Comm'r for Hum. Rts. (Mar. 14, 2013) (reporting Ministry of Foreign Affairs position as conveyed to UN investigator). https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements-and-speeches/2013/03/statement-special-rapporteur-following-meetings-pakistan

[xxv] Joint Session of Parliament of Pakistan, Resolution on U.S. Forces Action in Abbottabad and Drone Attacks (May 13–14, 2011) https://mofa.gov.pk/press-releases/resolution-adopted-by-the-joint-session-of-parliament-on-14-may-2011#:~:text=Pakistan's%20Flag-,Resolution%20adopted%20by%20the%20Joint%20Session%20of%20Parliament%20on%2014,the%20region%20and%20the%20world.; Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms While Countering Terrorism, Statement Following Meetings in Pakistan, U.N. Off. of the High Comm'r for Hum. Rts. (Mar. 14, 2013) https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements-and-speeches/2013/03/statement-special-rapporteur-following-meetings-pakistan#:~:text=The%20Special%20Rapporteur%20was%20informed%20that%20Pakistan%20considers%20that%20its,counter%2Dproductive%20to%20those%20efforts.

[xxvi] See generally Brunnée & Toope, supra note 10; Corten, supra note 11; Ahmed, supra note 11.

This is a student blog post and in no way represents the views of the Fordham International Law Journal.