For years, Afghanistan’s leadership has played a dangerous game of denial. While publicly speaking the language of peace and diplomacy, it continues to provide silent sanctuary to the very terrorists wreaking havoc in Pakistan. Among them, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) stands out as the most deadly benefactor of Kabul’s duplicity. Behind the closed doors of Kandahar and Kabul, safe houses flourish, training camps operate in the shadows, and TTP commanders live free planning attacks, regrouping, and rebuilding their networks.
The world was told that the fall of Kabul in 2021 would mark a new era of security cooperation. Instead, it became a turning point for TTP’s resurgence. The group found not just ideological sympathy, but operational freedom within Afghanistan. Border villages turned into launching pads, and the Durand Line became a one-way highway for militants coming into Pakistan, not fleeing it.
Kabul insists it wants peace with Islamabad, but peace cannot be built on the foundation of selective blindness. It cannot coexist with a policy that treats anti-Pakistan militants as assets rather than threats. The Afghan regime cannot claim sovereignty while allowing a foreign terrorist organization to run a parallel war machine on its soil.
The uncomfortable truth is this: without Afghan soil, TTP would be suffocating. Its leadership would be scattered, its hideouts compromised, and its narrative defeated. But as long as Afghanistan remains a permissive environment, no operation inside Pakistan can fully dismantle the threat. Pakistan’s sacrifices thousands of lives lost, cities terrorized, and tribal regions devastated continue to be undermined by Kabul’s silent complicity.
TTP’s existence in Afghanistan is not just a security failure, it’s a betrayal. And it’s time the world stops romanticizing Kabul’s victimhood while ignoring the monster it nurtures in its backyard.
