When Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif once again raised the alarm over terrorist groups operating from Afghan soil, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid reached for a familiar script.
He called the claim baseless.
It is not a new tactic. For nearly five years, Kabul’s response to mounting evidence of cross-border terrorism has been repetition of a single tactic: denial.
But denial is no longer a viable strategy when the documentation has outgrown any one government’s word against another’s.
Pakistan has, for years, presented what it calls irrefutable evidence of terrorist sanctuaries inside Afghanistan. It has named specific Afghan nationals, captured infiltrators, and dismantled networks tracing back across the border.
For a long time, these warnings were treated by much of the world as a bilateral dispute, Islamabad’s grievance against Kabul. That’s no longer the case, as international bodies and other countries have now documented cases, presented proofs, and raised similar concerns in multilateral bodies.
Central Asia, the Europe Union, China, the United States, Russia (only country to formally recognize the Taliban rule), and successive United Nations Security Council assessments.
What Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif raised was not a regional complaint, but international consensus.
The United Kingdom’s Special Representative for Afghanistan, Richard Lindsay, gave an interview that Kabul cannot easily explain away. Lindsay acknowledged that Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan has access to training camps, weapons, financing, and safe havens inside Afghanistan.
He went further, affirming that Pakistan has a right under international law to defend itself against threats crossing its border.
The European Union’s Special Envoy, Gilles Bertrand, delivered a strikingly similar message. He described TTP as a terrorist organization in its own right and warned that Afghanistan under Taliban rule continues to host safe havens, training facilities, arms supply routes, and financial networks that feed instability across the region.
Both envoys placed responsibility squarely on the authorities in Kabul and Kandahar.
Apart from diplomatic statements, institutional monitoring tells the same story with even more precision.
The 35th, 36th, 37th, and Sixteenth reports of the UN Security Council’s Monitoring Team have, in succession, documented the presence of more than twenty terrorist organizations operating inside Afghanistan.
Their estimates place the number of terrorist fighters in the country somewhere between 13,000 and 23,000. These figures are the product of a UN monitoring mechanism built specifically to track this threat, updated report after report, year after year.
Russia has separately warned that Afghanistan hosts between 18,000 and 23,000 militants, a range close enough to the UN’s own estimate that it is difficult to dismiss as coincidence.
China has repeatedly pressed the Taliban to act against TTP, the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, Al-Qaida, and the Islamic State Khorasan Province. The United States has criticized the Taliban regime for failing to meet the counterterrorism commitments it made under the Doha Agreement.
Pakistan, Britain, the European Union, Russia, China, the United States, and the United Nations do not typically align so closely on any specific political matter. When they do, the explanation can’t be that they are all mistaken.
That is the basis of the facts Zabihullah Mujahid called baseless. None of this evidence originates from a single hostile source that Kabul can wave away.
Instead of engaging with any of it, Zabihullah Mujahid continues to reach for blanket denial. He has not explained why more than twenty terrorist organizations continue to be documented on Afghan territory.
A denial repeated often enough does not become true. It simply becomes harder to take seriously, especially when the documentation keeps arriving from every direction.
Taliban Cannot Deny Documented Reality
When Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif once again raised the alarm over terrorist groups operating from Afghan soil, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid reached for a familiar script.
He called the claim baseless.
It is not a new tactic. For nearly five years, Kabul’s response to mounting evidence of cross-border terrorism has been repetition of a single tactic: denial.
But denial is no longer a viable strategy when the documentation has outgrown any one government’s word against another’s.
Pakistan has, for years, presented what it calls irrefutable evidence of terrorist sanctuaries inside Afghanistan. It has named specific Afghan nationals, captured infiltrators, and dismantled networks tracing back across the border.
For a long time, these warnings were treated by much of the world as a bilateral dispute, Islamabad’s grievance against Kabul. That’s no longer the case, as international bodies and other countries have now documented cases, presented proofs, and raised similar concerns in multilateral bodies.
Central Asia, the Europe Union, China, the United States, Russia (only country to formally recognize the Taliban rule), and successive United Nations Security Council assessments.
What Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif raised was not a regional complaint, but international consensus.
The United Kingdom’s Special Representative for Afghanistan, Richard Lindsay, gave an interview that Kabul cannot easily explain away. Lindsay acknowledged that Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan has access to training camps, weapons, financing, and safe havens inside Afghanistan.
He went further, affirming that Pakistan has a right under international law to defend itself against threats crossing its border.
The European Union’s Special Envoy, Gilles Bertrand, delivered a strikingly similar message. He described TTP as a terrorist organization in its own right and warned that Afghanistan under Taliban rule continues to host safe havens, training facilities, arms supply routes, and financial networks that feed instability across the region.
Both envoys placed responsibility squarely on the authorities in Kabul and Kandahar.
Apart from diplomatic statements, institutional monitoring tells the same story with even more precision.
The 35th, 36th, 37th, and Sixteenth reports of the UN Security Council’s Monitoring Team have, in succession, documented the presence of more than twenty terrorist organizations operating inside Afghanistan.
Their estimates place the number of terrorist fighters in the country somewhere between 13,000 and 23,000. These figures are the product of a UN monitoring mechanism built specifically to track this threat, updated report after report, year after year.
Russia has separately warned that Afghanistan hosts between 18,000 and 23,000 militants, a range close enough to the UN’s own estimate that it is difficult to dismiss as coincidence.
China has repeatedly pressed the Taliban to act against TTP, the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, Al-Qaida, and the Islamic State Khorasan Province. The United States has criticized the Taliban regime for failing to meet the counterterrorism commitments it made under the Doha Agreement.
Pakistan, Britain, the European Union, Russia, China, the United States, and the United Nations do not typically align so closely on any specific political matter. When they do, the explanation can’t be that they are all mistaken.
That is the basis of the facts Zabihullah Mujahid called baseless. None of this evidence originates from a single hostile source that Kabul can wave away.
Instead of engaging with any of it, Zabihullah Mujahid continues to reach for blanket denial. He has not explained why more than twenty terrorist organizations continue to be documented on Afghan territory.
A denial repeated often enough does not become true. It simply becomes harder to take seriously, especially when the documentation keeps arriving from every direction.
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