Pakistan, Taliban clash at Moscow talks

ISLAMABAD:

Simmering tensions between Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban regime overshadowed a regional conference on Afghanistan in Moscow on Monday, with the two sides trading sharp accusations over terrorism and cross-border attacks and failing to agree on a joint statement.

The breakdown marked a significant setback for the Moscow Format, a Russia-led regional mechanism established in 2017 to build consensus on Afghanistan. It was the first time since the inaugural meeting that participants failed to issue a joint statement.

The eighth meeting brought together senior representatives from Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Iran, India and Central Asian states to discuss Afghanistan's political, security and economic situation, including counterterrorism and regional connectivity. Belarus and Egypt attended as guests.

But the worsening confrontation between Islamabad and Kabul quickly became the dominant issue.

Pakistan was represented by Special Representative for Afghanistan Ambassador Mohammad Sadiq, while the Taliban delegation was led by Acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi.

Addressing the meeting, Sadiq delivered a blunt assessment of the security situation, putting terrorism at the centre of Pakistan's concerns.

"Terrorism remains at the core of Afghanistan's problems, with roots in the nexus between the Taliban Regime and terrorist groups," Sadiq said, according to the transcript of his statement.

He specifically referred to the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and other terrorist organisations operating from Afghan territory. "Over the last three years alone, more than 4,700 innocent Pakistanis have lost their lives to terrorism emanating from Afghanistan," Sadiq said.

He accused the Taliban regime of being complicit in the problem and defended Pakistan's military operations inside Afghanistan as acts of self-defence.

"The Taliban regime is complicit in this," Sadiq said, describing Pakistan's counterstrikes as "precise, intelligence-based and defensive in nature."

The Pakistani position effectively challenged the narrative Kabul has been presenting to regional countries that the recent escalation is primarily the result of Pakistani action against Afghanistan.

Muttaqi, in his address, took the opposite position, accusing Pakistan of relying on military pressure rather than diplomacy.

He said Kabul wanted its disputes with Islamabad resolved through dialogue and diplomacy and rejected what he described as a policy of accusations, propaganda and military action.

"Our fundamental position is that the existing problems between Afghanistan and Pakistan, whether security, political or economic, can be resolved through dialogue and diplomacy," Muttaqi said.

The Taliban foreign minister also maintained that Afghanistan had the right to defend itself against aggression and insisted that Kabul would formulate its domestic and foreign policies independently rather than under external pressure.

The sharply contrasting positions made agreement on language concerning terrorism virtually impossible.

Russia's special presidential envoy for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, later confirmed that the dispute between the Pakistani and Afghan delegations prevented the participants from adopting the final document.

"When drafting the final joint statement, we encountered one problem - that problem was that our Afghan and Pakistani colleagues didn't see eye to eye. We regret this," Kabulov said.

He explained that the Afghan side objected to the draft because it referred to Afghanistan too frequently in the context of terrorism. Kabulov noted that similar wording had been used in the statement issued after last year's meeting.

Kabulov nevertheless said the failure to issue a statement would not spell the end of the Moscow Format, arguing that the platform could continue to function despite the disagreement.

The failure to forge a regional consensus was accompanied by unusually strong Russian support for the Taliban government. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who opened the meeting, praised the Taliban's performance since its return to power in 2021 and described it as a "national government".

"The national government led by the Taliban movement came to power and it put under control the territory of the country, and we should recognize that it has been successfully ruling it," Lavrov said.

Lavrov also praised the Taliban for its efforts against Da'ish and other extremist groups and for combating drug trafficking.

He welcomed what he described as the Taliban government's achievements after the withdrawal of US and NATO forces, while reiterating Moscow's opposition to any return of Western military infrastructure to Afghanistan or neighbouring states.

"I'd like to highlight that we have zero tolerance to the deployment of NATO military infrastructure in the territory of Afghanistan and/or in neighboring countries under any pretext whatsoever," Lavrov said.

Russia has already gone further than other major powers in its engagement with Kabul. Moscow formally recognised the Taliban administration in 2025, making it the first country to do so.

The Russian position at the Moscow meeting therefore stood in marked contrast to Pakistan's emphasis on the Taliban's links with terrorist groups operating against Pakistan.

The meeting also highlighted a broader problem for the regional approach to Afghanistan: countries that once broadly agreed on the need for an inclusive, stable and secure Afghanistan are increasingly divided over how to deal with the Taliban regime and, more importantly, how to assess the security threat emanating from Afghan territory.

The collapse of the joint statement in Moscow has therefore exposed not merely a Pakistan-Afghanistan disagreement, but a widening gap among regional powers regarding Afghanistan's future and how to deal with the Taliban regime.