Ali Zafar
THERE is a ritual that plays out with clockwork precision in the corridors of Kabul.
Pakistan acts against a terrorist hideout. Within hours, the Taliban regime issues a statement invoking the same images of suffering and alleging civilian casualties. Every time a terrorist hideout is targeted, they repeat the same propaganda while ignoring the devastating toll of terrorism inflicted upon Pakistan. It is a strategy as cynical as it is transparent: weaponize humanitarian language, neutralize a neighbour’s right to self-defence, repeat. The world is not fooled. And Pakistan’s patience, long the diplomatic asset its leaders offered as proof of good faith, has ceased to be a virtue. It has become a liability.
Three months of restraint. A graveyard of results: Pakistan has shown enormous restraint for the past three months while suffering numerous terrorist attacks from Afghan soil, entirely unabated. This was not passivity born of weakness. It was a strategic choice, a deliberate preference for cooperation over confrontation and dialogue over unila-teral action. Intelligence was shared, border mechanisms were proposed and public appeals were issued at every diplomatic level.
Pakistan wanted the Taliban regime to take action against these terrorists. It was not an un-reasonable request. It was the bare minimum demanded by international norms of good neighbourliness. The response from Kabul was a masterclass in evasion: denial, distraction and propaganda. Not a single terrorist sanctuary was dismantled. Not one handler was held accountable. The attacks did not slow. They accelerated. “Diplomacy cannot succeed if one party’s foundational security concerns are dismissed, every single time, with a theatrical performance of victimhood.” The ledger of blood: Abstract geopolitical arguments often obscure what is, at its core, a story of human lives ended prematurely and violently. Over the last three months, attacks continued unabated from Afghan soil. On June 8, 2026, the Hassan Khel Post was struck in a brazen ambush by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan. Six Federal Constabulary soldiers were martyred, eight injured and seven abducted from a sovereign border post.
On May 9, 2026, a coordinated suicide assault struck a police outpost in Bannu, employing an explosives-laden vehicle, heavy weaponry and drones as tools of precision terror. Fifteen police officers were martyred. Earlier, in April 2026, a suicide bomber rammed an explo-sives-heavy vehicle into a local police station, killing five innocent civilians and tearing apart the surrounding neighbourhood, underscoring the reality Pakistan continues to face. Till how long can Pakistan take this? It is not a rhetorical question. It is the central legal, moral and strategic question of this conflict. No sovereign state can be expected to indefinitely absorb the consequences of cross-border terrorism while those responsible continue operating with impunity from neighbouring territory. International law recognises this explicitly. The right of self-defence does not evaporate at a border demarcated by someone else’s denial.
The question is also being asked beyond Islamabad. The world is showing concern over ter-rorist sanctuaries on Afghan soil under the Taliban regime. At the UN Security Council ses-sion on June 8, 2026, the same day Pakistani soldiers were being killed at Hassan Khel, every country present save one condemned the Taliban regime for harbouring terrorists. That solitary abstention was India. The rest of the international community spoke with one voice. Kabul stands exposed not merely as a regional bad actor but as a launchpad for violent extremism.
When Pakistan strikes, it does so with precision and on the basis of credible intelligence. The Taliban and its TTP clients deploy drones against police stations, ram vehicle bombs into populated areas and conduct suicide assaults on public infrastructure. Pakistan’s coun-terterrorism operations are targeted, intelligence-driven and aimed exclusively at the terrorist infrastructure that Kabul refuses to dismantle. Repeated calls for concrete, verifiable action against terrorist groups have yielded precisely nothing while Pakistani lives continue being lost to attacks organised, funded and launched from Afghan territory. The contrast in methods could not be starker. The international com-munity has taken full note.
The head of the snake: There is a huge public demand in Pakistan for decisive action against the Taliban regime’s terrorist leadership and its military apparatus. The patience of the Pakistani people, tested across years of loss and funerals of soldiers and civilians alike, has expired. What was once a policy of principled restraint has, in the eyes of millions, crossed the line into political complicity with an enemy’s impunity. The lesson of two decades of counterterrorism is written in hard experience: eliminating foot soldiers while leaving the command architecture intact is a failed strategy. It treats symptoms while the disease metastasises. Networks regenerate, funding flows are restored and recruiters find new material.
If cross-border attacks do not stop, Pakistan will have no option but to go after those responsible for sheltering, funding, arming and sponsoring the TTP. Why exhaust national resources and sacrifice soldiers hunting foot soldiers when the head of the snake remains untouched, protected by Kabul’s deliberate inaction? Pakistan has never sought conflict with Afghanistan. It seeks what any rational state seeks: a stable, cooperative neighbour that does not serve as a staging ground for attacks against Pakistani citizens. The two countries share geography, history, trade routes and millions of family bonds across the Durand Line. The case for cooperation is not just moral. It is over-whelmingly practical.
But cooperation requires reciprocity. And reciprocity requires honesty. The choice before those who control Kabul is increasingly urgent: take demonstrable, verifiable action to dis-mantle the terrorist networks operating from Afghan soil or face the consequences of a Pa-kistan that has exhausted its reserves of restraint and whose legal and strategic rights are recognized by the international community. Pakistan’s patience should never be mistaken for weakness. The two are not the same. One is a policy. The other is a character. Kabul has repeatedly misread the former as the latter. That misreading, if it continues, will carry a cost that neither country and no civilian population on either side of the border, can afford.
—The writer occasionally contributes to the national daily.
