Pakistan says its security "will not be held hostage" as Afghan Taliban declare talks over

Pakistan and Afghanistan’s Taliban government traded blame on Saturday, October 31, after the Taliban spokesman said Kabul’s efforts to settle the dispute through talks had run their course without result.

Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban government’s chief spokesman, told Radio Azadi and Hurriyat Radio that Afghanistan had made its final efforts through dialogue, that messages had continued to pass between Kabul and Islamabad, and that mediation by other countries had also failed to ease tensions. He accused Islamabad of lacking the readiness to resolve the dispute peacefully.

Pakistan’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting answered the same day in a statement posted on X, calling the spokesman’s remarks reflective of a “deeply misguided approach”. The ministry said the Taliban leadership was blaming Pakistan’s policies while ignoring what Islamabad calls the real cause of the breakdown: terrorism launched from Afghan soil. “Pakistan’s security will not be held hostage to Afghan Taliban’s inaction, evasions or misplaced priorities,” the statement said, adding that terrorism was a red line and that Pakistan reserved the right to take all necessary measures under international law against threats to its security, wherever they originated.

The dispute also reached the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in Atlanta, where United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on October 31 that Washington had heard Pakistan’s concerns. “Pakistan is concerned about terrorist attacks that are being sponsored from the territory of Afghanistan. They feel that the Taliban is not doing enough to constrain those attacks,” Rubio said, adding: “We obviously don’t want them to be targeted for terrorism,” and that the United States would step in if it could play a “productive role”.

Islamabad says the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan uses Afghan territory to attack inside Pakistan. The Taliban government denies allowing its soil to be used against Pakistan. Earlier mediation rounds — a Qatar- and Turkiye-brokered ceasefire in Doha last October, follow-up talks in Istanbul, and talks hosted by China in Urumqi in April this year — have not settled the core disagreement over militant groups operating from Afghanistan, and a Moscow Format meeting on October 5 ended without a joint statement.

Sources: The Express Tribune, 1 November 2026; UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News, 1 November 2026; ProPakistani, 1 November 2026.