Pakistan tells Taliban to stop militants using Afghan soil for attacks

Pakistan on Monday asked Afghanistan's Taliban government to stop militants from using Afghan territory to launch attacks inside Pakistan, with Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar warning that the same groups could eventually pose a threat to the Taliban's own rule. The renewed warning comes amid rising tensions between the two neighbours over militant activity and repeated cross-border violence.

The strain in ties has grown with repeated border clashes and Pakistani airstrikes in Afghanistan. The United Nations Mission in Afghanistan said in September that it had documented more than 1,100 civilian deaths and injuries from cross-border violence in Afghanistan this year.

Speaking at a think tank event broadcast on Pakistani television, Dar said he had already raised the issue with Afghan Prime Minister Mullah Mohammad Hasan Akhund during a visit to Kabul in July 2025. “I politely reminded him that if the Afghan authorities failed to take appropriate action against terrorist groups operating from their territory, the day would come when these very groups would threaten his government as well,” Dar said.

Dar did not give details of Afghanistan's response, and there was no immediate comment from Kabul. Pakistan has often accused Kabul of sheltering the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, as well as the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army, or BLA, and al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent, an affiliate of the global extremist network. The TTP is separate from, but closely allied with, Afghanistan's ruling Taliban. Dar did not explain why he believed militants could turn against the Afghan Taliban.

Afghanistan's Taliban government has repeatedly denied providing a safe haven to militants targeting Pakistan. Dar said Pakistan's diplomatic and economic outreach to Kabul had brought no meaningful progress on its main security demand, action against militants operating from Afghan soil. “Good neighbourly relations are a two-way responsibility,” he said. “They cannot mean silently absorbing one attack after another.”

Dar said he visited Kabul three times in 2025 as Pakistan tried to expand trade, upgraded diplomatic representation to the ambassadorial level, and pursued a railway link connecting Pakistan with Central Asia through Afghanistan. He said Pakistan wanted a stable and prosperous Afghanistan but could no longer ignore what he described as a continuing militant threat from across the border.

“Attacks inside Pakistan are planned, directed and launched from across the border,” Dar said. “Terrorists infiltrate through mountainous terrain, target our soldiers and civilians, and retreat to their sanctuaries.” He said Pakistan's military had completed nearly 95 per cent of a fence along the more than 2,600-kilometre border with Afghanistan. The fencing began in 2017 after militants launched cross-border attacks on Pakistani army posts.

Dar described the TTP as one of Pakistan's gravest security threats, saying it had carried out attacks on schools, mosques, markets and security installations. He also accused the separatist BLA of targeting civilians, security personnel and economic infrastructure. Pakistan says more than 2,800 militant attacks since January have killed or wounded about 300 people.

At the same event, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar also blamed the rise in violence on Afghanistan-based militants, including the TTP. Citing UN and independent assessments, Tarar said Afghanistan was hosting more than 6,000 TTP fighters and more than 20,000 militants overall. He accused the TTP of using Afghan territory to recruit, train and plan attacks on Pakistan since the Afghan Taliban returned to power in 2021.

Pakistan's latest warning to Kabul, set against rising cross-border violence and its own account of militant attacks, underlined its position that ties cannot improve without action against armed groups operating from Afghan territory.

With PTI Inputs

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