NEW YORK CITY
\nFive years after the Taliban swept into Kabul, Pakistan\u2019s ambassador to the UN, Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, is not walking back Defense Minister Khawaja Asif\u2019s February declaration that the two countries are in \u201copen war.\u201d
\n\u201cThe trends are posing grave concern,\u201d Ahmad told Arab News in an interview marking the fifth anniversary of the takeover, pointing to reports from the UN\u2019s own sanctions monitoring team and the secretary-general on Afghanistan\u2019s renewed role as \u201ca safe haven for a number of terrorist groups.\u201d
\nAhmad described a steady deterioration in Kabul\u2019s conduct since the Taliban returned to power on Aug. 15, 2021. \u201cPakistan\u2019s basic position and basic approach towards Afghanistan and the people of Afghanistan remains the same,\u201d he said, describing the two countries as \u201cnext door neighbors\u201d bound by \u201cdeep rooted and longstanding\u201d ties.
\nHe stressed that Islamabad\u2019s quarrel is not with ordinary Afghans, who he said have borne the brunt of \u201cdecades of instability and conflict.\u201d Pakistan, he added, has \u201cfelt and has been impacted directly by the consequences of that period of instability\u201d more than any other country.
\nAhmad traced the international community\u2019s current frustration to expectations set out during the 2020 Doha talks between the US and the Taliban, and reaffirmed as the group took power the following year. There were three core benchmarks: an inclusive government, respect for human rights \u2014 particularly the rights of women and girls \u2014 and a guarantee that Afghan soil would not be used to stage terrorism against any other country.
\nPakistan did not simply wait to see whether Kabul would deliver, Ahmad said. Within four months of the takeover, Islamabad convened an extraordinary session of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation\u2019s foreign ministers in December 2021 to rally international support for Afghanistan\u2019s recovery. Five years on, he said, the record is one of regression rather than progress on all three fronts, with continued restrictions on girls\u2019 education and women\u2019s employment as evidence on the human rights front, and an exclusionary governance structure that has failed to broaden.
\nAhmad said the frequency and intensity of attacks linked by Pakistan to militant groups operating from Afghanistan had surged. He cited more than 5,200 terrorism-related incidents in Pakistan in 2025 and more than 1,300 deaths \u2014 figures that include categories broader than independently verified attacks traced to Afghan soil.
\nBehind those numbers, Ahmad named three groups he holds primarily responsible: Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, the Balochistan Liberation Army and the Majeed Brigade, alongside Daesh\u2019s regional affiliate. He described the first three as increasingly acting \u201cas proxies to our adversaries in the region.\u201d
\nAsked directly whether the Taliban are deliberately sheltering the TTP or simply unable to rein it in, Ahmad said the evidence, from UN monitoring team reports and Pakistan\u2019s own intelligence, points to the more serious explanation.
\n\u201cIn fact, the way the whole thing is operating now, it\u2019s basically the Taliban regime itself is a proxy, trying to destabilize the entire region,\u201d Ahmad said, arguing this serves neither Pakistan\u2019s interests nor those of ordinary Afghans. The Taliban has denied fostering ties with the TTP or other militant groups.
\nPressed on what should happen next \u2014 whether the burden falls on Pakistan\u2019s military, or on outside powers with leverage over Kabul \u2014 Ahmad said responsibility lies squarely with the Afghan side, even as he acknowledged Pakistan\u2019s own forces have paid \u201ca heavy toll\u201d patrolling the porous, roughly 2,600-kilometer Durand Line and striking militant targets.
\nHe raised the possibility of a formal religious edict, or fatwa, from senior Taliban clergy against groups like the TTP, paired with \u201cconcrete, verifiable steps\u201d to deny them safe haven and financing.
\nAhmad listed Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, China and Qatar as \u201ccommon friends\u201d of both Islamabad and Kabul who have attempted to mediate \u2014 all of whom were involved in brokering the ceasefire and subsequent Istanbul talks earlier this year \u2014 but said the Taliban side has consistently declined to give the assurances sought.
\nAsked who, if anyone, the Taliban leadership actually listens to, Ahmad was blunt: \u201cIt\u2019s a strange situation. I think it\u2019s up to them to decide,\u201d adding that \u201csome serious introspection is in order\u201d given Afghanistan\u2019s isolation, frozen assets and lack of formal recognition \u2014 outcomes he said the group could reverse if it wanted development and investment instead.
\nAhmad argued that the \u201ctime and space\u201d given by the international community to the Taliban after 2021 \u2014 including through the UN\u2019s own engagement framework \u2014 has yielded no reciprocal steps from Kabul on any of the three benchmarks.
\nHe drew a comparison with Washington\u2019s approach to the Taliban\u2019s detention of American nationals, noting that the US has denied the group\u2019s leadership travel-ban exemptions over what it calls \u201chostage diplomacy.\u201d If that standard applies to individual hostages, Ahmad argued, it should apply with even greater force to a \u201ccontinuous stream of attacks\u201d against Pakistani citizens that he says Kabul actively enables.
\nOn whether fellow Muslim-majority states retain unique leverage over the Taliban, Ahmad recalled Pakistan working alongside Indonesia and Saudi Arabia after 2021 to make the case \u2014 including on girls\u2019 education \u2014 that the Taliban\u2019s restrictions on women \u201care not actually in line with Islamic teachings or traditions.\u201d
\nWestern governments, he added, have no objection in principle to an Islamic system of government in Kabul, only to policies that discriminate against women or minorities \u2014 an obstacle he said is entirely within the Taliban\u2019s power to remove.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NEW YORK CITY Five years after the Taliban swept into Kabul, Pakistan\u2019s ambassador to the UN, Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, is not walking back Defense Minister Khawaja Asif\u2019s February declaration that the two countries are in \u201copen war.\u201d \u201cThe trends are posing grave concern,\u201d Ahmad told Arab News in an interview marking the fifth anniversary of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":101742,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101726"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101746,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101726\/revisions\/101746"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}