For too long, our nation has borne the grievous wounds inflicted by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a terrorist syndicate that has found a willing sanctuary across our western border. For years, we have pleaded, demanded, and provided irrefutable proof to successive governments in Kabul about these vipers nesting on their soil, only to be met with a wall of denial and obfuscation. Pakistan has sent delegation after delegation, file after file of evidence, but the response has been a consistent, insulting fiction: the TTP, they claim, is not there. But the funerals in our cities and villages tell a different story. The blood of our children, our soldiers, and our citizens is a testament to this lethal reality.
The time for polite diplomatic overtures is definitively over. The recent trilateral meeting in Kabul, attended by our officials and our Chinese allies, was not just another talk. It was the delivery of an ultimatum, forged in the fires of our people’s suffering. The message to the Afghan Taliban was unequivocal and final: take decisive, irreversible action against the TTP and their cohorts, or hand them over to us. “There is no third option.” This is no longer a request; it is a demand for the security of our homeland, a right we will no longer see trampled upon.
Our profound mistrust of Kabul’s intentions is not born from prejudice, but from bitter experience. It is validated by the sickening revelations of corruption that have surfaced. Reports of Afghan officials allegedly pocketing $6 million in aid, generously given by Gulf nations to disarm and resettle TTP families away from our border, are a stunning indictment of the regime’s priorities. The funds vanished, the terrorists remain, and the promises turned to dust. This is why we, in Pakistan, flatly refused to pour our own public money into this black hole of deceit. How can we be expected to trust a neighbor that seemingly profits from the very terror that bleeds us?
Let us be clear: the internal squabbles and gangland warfare now consuming the TTP and its splinter groups, like the Hafiz Gul Bahadur faction, in Afghan provinces are not our concern. We are not interested in their bloody feuds over money and turf, supercharged by the billions of dollars worth of abandoned Western weaponry they now control. But when Kabul has the audacity to blame Pakistan for a drone strike that is transparently the result of their own internal terrorist turf wars, we must call out the lie. This is a classic diversion tactic, meant to obscure the fundamental truth: the Afghan government has failed to exert control over its own territory and the monsters it harbors.
And as this chaos brews, we remain acutely aware of the “Great Game” being played at our expense. The sinister hand of India’s RAW continues to stir the pot, funding and weaponizing these terrorist groups as proxies in its vile campaign to destabilize Pakistan. New Delhi speaks of peace on international forums while its spies orchestrate bloodshed on our soil. Their hypocrisy stands unmasked, yet the militants they support continue to find shelter and operational freedom under the Taliban’s watch in Afghanistan.
Pakistan is at a watershed moment. Our patience has not just worn thin; it has evaporated. We have endured the funerals, comforted the grieving, and rebuilt our bombed-out markets too many times. The duplicity from Kabul, which allows terrorists to flourish while its officials allegedly line their pockets with blood money, is an insult to the memory of every Pakistani victim of TTP terror. The ultimatum has been delivered. The responsibility for what comes next lies squarely with Afghanistan. They must dismantle the terrorist infrastructure they have allowed to metastasize, or we will be forced to secure our nation by any means necessary. For Pakistan, this is no longer a matter of policy; it is a matter of survival.
