By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has dismissed as “frivolous” and “baseless” claims from the Afghan Taliban that weapons are being smuggled across the border for use in subversive activities, instead calling on Kabul to confront militant networks operating from its territory.
The rebuttal from Islamabad’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting came on Sunday, hours after a spokesman for Afghanistan’s 201st Khalid bin Waleed Corps said intelligence forces had intercepted 74 weapons in the country’s eastern zone, some of which he claimed had been smuggled in from Pakistan for what he described as acts of sabotage.
Mawlawi Wahidullah Mohammadi made the allegation in a video statement, though he offered no further detail on how the weapons had allegedly crossed the border or who was responsible for moving them.
Pakistan’s information ministry responded within hours, posting its rejection on X. “The Afghan Taliban regime’s claim that weapons are being smuggled from Pakistan into Afghanistan for so-called ‘subversive activities’ is frivolous, baseless and contrary to established facts,” the statement read.
The ministry argued that Afghanistan had no shortage of weaponry of its own, pointing to what it described as vast stockpiles left behind after the chaotic 2021 withdrawal of American and coalition forces, estimated to be worth around $7.2bn, alongside decades of accumulated Soviet-era arms from earlier conflicts.
“Attempts to manufacture a Pakistani connection to such weapons seem designed to divert international attention from the far more serious and documented concern: terrorist groups continue to find space, facilitation and operational freedom on Afghan soil to plan, support and execute attacks inside Pakistan,” it said.
Rather than “implausible accusations and blame-shifting”, the ministry said, the Taliban administration should turn its attention to dismantling terrorist sanctuaries on its own territory and make good on repeated pledges that Afghan soil would not be used to stage attacks against Pakistan or any other country.
The exchange is the latest flashpoint in a relationship that has grown increasingly strained as Pakistan grapples with a marked rise in militant violence across its western provinces along the Afghan frontier. Islamabad has repeatedly pressed the Taliban government to move against fighters it accuses of using Afghan territory as a base, appeals that officials say have largely gone unanswered. Kabul, for its part, denies harbouring militants and has urged Pakistan to look inward for solutions to its security problems.
The dispute over weapons is not new. Pakistan raised the issue at the United Nations Security Council in November, warning that the acquisition of abandoned military equipment by Afghanistan-based terrorist groups posed a threat not only to Pakistan but to regional stability more broadly.
The concern was given weight by a Washington Post investigation published in April 2025, which found that the militants behind the attack on the Jaffar Express train in Balochistan had used weapons abandoned by American forces during their withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Tensions escalated further last month after a series of major attacks in Balochistan, prompting Chief of Defence Forces and Chief of the Army Staff Field Marshal Asim Munir to vow that cross-border terrorism would be met with the “full might of the state”.
With militancy showing little sign of abating in Pakistan’s border regions, and both sides trading accusations rather than cooperation, relations between Islamabad and Kabul look set to remain fraught for the foreseeable future.
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