ISLAMABAD: Recent security developments have reinforced Pakistan’s long-standing assessment that Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Afghan Taliban operate as a mutually reinforcing nexus, where pressure on one group is met with retaliation by the other.
The pattern was again visible this week after Pakistan launched Operation Ghazab lil Haq in response to unprovoked cross-border attacks. As Pakistan struck Afghan Taliban targets inside Afghanistan, TTP elements attempted to escalate violence inside Pakistan, including failed drone attacks in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar confirmed that TTP-linked terrorists attempted to launch drones in Abbottabad, Swabi and Nowshera, but said Pakistan’s anti-drone systems intercepted all of them, preventing any loss of life.
“These incidents have again exposed direct linkages between the Afghan Taliban regime and terrorism in Pakistan,” Tarar said in a statement.
Terrorist groups' messaging, released the same day, removed any remaining ambiguity.
A TTP faction, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, publicly issued directives to its terrorist operatives across Pakistan to escalate attacks on security forces, portraying the violence as retaliation for Pakistan’s military action against Afghan Taliban targets. The message openly described attacks inside Pakistan as an act of “solidarity” with the Afghan Taliban.
An earlier internal directive attributed to TTP leadership went further, declaring that the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan stands with our mujahideen” and ordering commanders to escalate attacks while amplifying propaganda through media channels.
Pakistani officials say this coordinated messaging reflects an operational reality that has persisted since the Taliban takeover of Kabul in 2021: Afghan soil has increasingly been used as a safe haven for groups targeting Pakistan.
Islamabad maintains that the return of the Taliban to power removed constraints on terrorist networks, enabling training, planning and cross-border attacks with impunity.
Security sources argue the sequence is now predictable. When Pakistan confronts terrorist infrastructure inside Afghanistan, TTP cells activate inside Pakistan. When TTP strikes Pakistani targets, protection and facilitation trace back across the border.
Pakistan says repeated diplomatic engagements have failed to alter this behavior and that the Afghan Taliban regime has neither acknowledged nor acted against the presence of anti-Pakistan terrorist groups on its territory.
As military operations and militant reprisals continue in parallel, Pakistani authorities say the distinction between the Afghan Taliban and TTP is no longer theoretical but operational. A shared ecosystem in which an attack on one triggers a response from the other.
