Arab News | Pakistan urges Afghan Taliban to stop militants from carrying out cross-border attacks

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan urged Afghanistan’s Taliban government Monday to stop militants from using Afghan territory to launch attacks inside Pakistan, renewing a warning that the same armed groups could eventually threaten the Taliban’s own rule.

Tensions between the neighbors have escalated amid repeated border clashes and Pakistani airstrikes in Afghanistan, deepening a longstanding dispute over militant activity. 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.

In a speech at a think tank broadcast on Pakistani television, Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said he had already delivered a warning once to 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.

He gave no details of Afghanistan’s response, and there was no immediate comment from Kabul.

Pakistan frequently accuses 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-Qaeda 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 assumed that militants could turn against the Afghan Taliban.

Afghanistan’s Taliban government has repeatedly denied providing a safe haven for militants targeting Pakistan.

Dar said Pakistan’s diplomatic and economic overtures to Kabul had yielded no meaningful progress on its central security demand: action against militants operating from Afghan soil.

“Good neighborly 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 sought to expand trade, upgraded diplomatic representation to the ambassadorial level, and pursued a railway linking 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,” he said. “Terrorists infiltrate through mountainous terrain, target our soldiers and civilians, and retreat to their sanctuaries.”

Dar said Pakistan’s military has completed nearly 95 percent of a fence along the border, more than 2,600 kilometers (1,600 miles) long, with Afghanistan. The fence was begun in 2017, after militants cross-border attacks on Pakistani army posts.

Dar described the TTP as one of Pakistan’s gravest security threats, citing 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.

Speaking at the same event as Dar on Monday, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar blamed the surge in violence on Afghanistan-based militants, including the TTP. Citing UN and independent assessments, Tarar said Afghanistan hosts 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.