Pakistan denies arming and recruiting Afghan fighters while demanding Taliban act against TTP

Pakistan's Information Ministry urged Afghanistan's Taliban government on Saturday to take "verifiable action" against militants it says operate from Afghan soil. In a separate statement on X, the same ministry rejected allegations that Pakistan was arming Afghans to fight the Taliban or recruiting them to fight anti-Pakistan insurgents — claims posted a day earlier by Zalmay Khalilzad, the former U.S. envoy to Afghanistan, who cited no evidence and named no sources. A day before that, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid had declared Kabul free of any responsibility for insecurity inside Pakistan, saying its neighbour's security agencies were shifting blame for failures of their own making.

Each government now denies exactly what it accuses the other of. Pakistan says the Taliban shelter the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, the Baloch Liberation Army and al-Qaida's Indian Subcontinent affiliate, and that many of their leaders have found sanctuary in Afghanistan since the Taliban returned to power in 2021. Kabul denies providing sanctuary and says it has neither the interest nor the capability to foment unrest abroad. A U.S. report covering January through March put the Pakistani Taliban at 4,000 to 6,000 fighters; Pakistani authorities count more than 2,800 militant attacks since January, killing 3,000 people, mostly in the northwest and in Balochistan.

The traffic runs both ways across the border. Last month Afghanistan announced its forces had killed 28 fighters and captured 32 more, including alleged Islamic State members it said had crossed from Pakistan. Pakistan's ministry, in reply, listed attempted cross-border infiltration, militant casualties during its counterterrorism operations and recovered foreign-origin weapons as matters requiring scrutiny — while dismissing the claims about its own conduct without offering documentation either. The group Islamabad most wants reined in, the Pakistani Taliban, is separate from but closely allied with the movement that governs Afghanistan.

None of this is only verbal. Pakistan is running multiple operations near the Afghan border and has carried out airstrikes inside Afghanistan amid repeated clashes between the two countries' forces.

One post on X from the man who, as Washington's envoy, negotiated the withdrawal agreement with the Taliban drew a formal denial from a sitting government within a day. The channel the United States once opened to the movement still carries weight in Islamabad; this week what travelled down it was a claim with nothing attached.

Islamabad is asking Kabul for verifiable action against the militants on its soil. The case against Islamabad remains a post without sources.