At the conference “Pakistan’s Evolving Counter-Terrorism Landscape and Regional Peace and Security,” two of Pakistan’s senior-most officials laid out, in unusually direct terms, both the scale of the country’s terrorism burden and the narrow ask it continues to make of Kabul.
Information Minister Attaullah Tarar put the estimated terrorist presence along the Afghan border at over 20,000, telling the conference that since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, the TTP has used Afghan territory for recruitment, training and attacks against Pakistan. He cited the UN’s 38th Monitoring Report, which documented the relocation of roughly 2,000 TTP fighters and their families deeper into Afghanistan — a finding PAYF has previously noted shows Kabul retains the capacity to act against the group, even where it has not acted fully. Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar placed the human and economic cost in historical context: more than 90,000 lives lost to terrorism over recent decades, and economic losses exceeding $100 billion. These figures, cited together, are a reminder that the current wave of violence sits on top of a much longer national toll, not apart from it.
What stood out in Dar’s remarks was their narrowness. “Pakistan has only one demand from Afghanistan,” he said, “that it should not allow its territory to be used for terrorism.” This is a lower bar than regime change, border revision, or any of the maximalist framings sometimes attributed to Pakistan’s position. It is a request for Kabul to meet an obligation it already accepted, both as a matter of customary expectations between neighbouring states and, more specifically, under the 2020 Doha Agreement. Dar also referenced the trilateral Pakistan-China-Afghanistan meeting held in Kabul in August of last year, noting that Taliban authorities failed to honour the commitments made there. Read alongside Tarar’s account of unsuccessful recent negotiations, the picture is one of a diplomatic track that has been tried repeatedly and has not yet delivered.
Both officials anchored their remarks in specifics rather than generalities: the Jaffar Express attack, the abduction and killing of workers in Balochistan, Tarar’s visit to attack victims at a military hospital in Kohat. This grounding matters for how the message lands; it is not simply a diplomatic grievance but an account of recent, named incidents with identifiable victims. Tarar also raised a dimension that is sometimes left out of counter-terrorism-focused statements: the Taliban’s restrictions on women’s education and economic participation, describing the regime’s ideology as one that “promotes violent extremism and denies women and minorities basic rights.” Linking the human-rights record to the regional security argument broadens the case Pakistan is making internationally, beyond cross-border attacks alone.
Both speakers noted that Pakistan has hosted more than four million Afghan refugees while seeking Kabul’s cooperation on counter-terrorism; cooperation Tarar acknowledged has “yielded limited results.” The juxtaposition is deliberate: a state that has absorbed a significant humanitarian burden is asking, in return, for compliance with a basic security commitment. Tarar’s closing point, that Pakistan’s preference for dialogue “should not be seen as weakness,” is best read as a signal that this patience has limits, even as the diplomatic door remains open.
What these remarks do not resolve is the one PAYF has flagged consistently: whether Kabul’s selective cooperation, demonstrated by the TTP relocation the UN documented, can be extended into full compliance, or whether it will remain partial. Pakistan’s position, as restated here, keeps the door to dialogue open while placing the burden of the next move squarely on Kabul.
Patience Is Not Weakness: Pakistan’s Case to Kabul, Delivered at ISSI
At the conference “Pakistan’s Evolving Counter-Terrorism Landscape and Regional Peace and Security,” two of Pakistan’s senior-most officials laid out, in unusually direct terms, both the scale of the country’s terrorism burden and the narrow ask it continues to make of Kabul.
Information Minister Attaullah Tarar put the estimated terrorist presence along the Afghan border at over 20,000, telling the conference that since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, the TTP has used Afghan territory for recruitment, training and attacks against Pakistan. He cited the UN’s 38th Monitoring Report, which documented the relocation of roughly 2,000 TTP fighters and their families deeper into Afghanistan — a finding PAYF has previously noted shows Kabul retains the capacity to act against the group, even where it has not acted fully. Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar placed the human and economic cost in historical context: more than 90,000 lives lost to terrorism over recent decades, and economic losses exceeding $100 billion. These figures, cited together, are a reminder that the current wave of violence sits on top of a much longer national toll, not apart from it.
What stood out in Dar’s remarks was their narrowness. “Pakistan has only one demand from Afghanistan,” he said, “that it should not allow its territory to be used for terrorism.” This is a lower bar than regime change, border revision, or any of the maximalist framings sometimes attributed to Pakistan’s position. It is a request for Kabul to meet an obligation it already accepted, both as a matter of customary expectations between neighbouring states and, more specifically, under the 2020 Doha Agreement. Dar also referenced the trilateral Pakistan-China-Afghanistan meeting held in Kabul in August of last year, noting that Taliban authorities failed to honour the commitments made there. Read alongside Tarar’s account of unsuccessful recent negotiations, the picture is one of a diplomatic track that has been tried repeatedly and has not yet delivered.
Both officials anchored their remarks in specifics rather than generalities: the Jaffar Express attack, the abduction and killing of workers in Balochistan, Tarar’s visit to attack victims at a military hospital in Kohat. This grounding matters for how the message lands; it is not simply a diplomatic grievance but an account of recent, named incidents with identifiable victims. Tarar also raised a dimension that is sometimes left out of counter-terrorism-focused statements: the Taliban’s restrictions on women’s education and economic participation, describing the regime’s ideology as one that “promotes violent extremism and denies women and minorities basic rights.” Linking the human-rights record to the regional security argument broadens the case Pakistan is making internationally, beyond cross-border attacks alone.
Both speakers noted that Pakistan has hosted more than four million Afghan refugees while seeking Kabul’s cooperation on counter-terrorism; cooperation Tarar acknowledged has “yielded limited results.” The juxtaposition is deliberate: a state that has absorbed a significant humanitarian burden is asking, in return, for compliance with a basic security commitment. Tarar’s closing point, that Pakistan’s preference for dialogue “should not be seen as weakness,” is best read as a signal that this patience has limits, even as the diplomatic door remains open.
What these remarks do not resolve is the one PAYF has flagged consistently: whether Kabul’s selective cooperation, demonstrated by the TTP relocation the UN documented, can be extended into full compliance, or whether it will remain partial. Pakistan’s position, as restated here, keeps the door to dialogue open while placing the burden of the next move squarely on Kabul.
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