Pakistan Says It Will «Obliterate» Taliban Regime in Afghanistan

The Pakistani government said that negotiations held in Istanbul had ended without a solution, marking a total breakdown in efforts to ease tensions with Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban.

The failure of the talks comes amid a sharp escalation of violence along the border, where heavy clashes in recent days have left multiple dead on both sides and pushed the region closer to open conflict.

In recent weeks, fighting between Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban has sharply escalated along the border. Pakistan accuses the Taliban government in Kabul of sheltering militants from the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), who have launched deadly attacks inside its territory. According to Islamabad, recent clashes killed five Pakistani soldiers and twenty-five Taliban fighters near the frontier.

The peace talks between Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban began in mid-October with a first round in Doha, followed by a four-day session in Istanbul that ended without agreement.

After peace talks in Istanbul collapsed without agreement, Pakistan’s defence minister warned that the country could «obliterate» the Taliban if violence continued.

«Pakistan does not require to employ even a fraction of its full arsenal to completely obliterate the Taliban regime and push them back to the caves for hiding,» Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif said in a post on X. The conflict has further intensified as thousands of Afghan refugees gathered at the Chaman border crossing awaiting deportation.

Major border crossings such as Torkham and Chaman have since been closed, and Pakistan says it has carried out airstrikes against TTP positions inside Afghanistan. Efforts by Turkey and Qatar to revive negotiations have so far failed, leaving tensions at their highest point since the Taliban took power in 2021.