Deadlock Negotiations, Pakistan Threatens To Eliminate Taliban

JAKARTA - Pakistan's defense minister threatened to "eliminate" the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan's neighboring countries.

This threat is a dramatic increase in rhetoric after the failure of negotiations towards lasting peace between the two South Asian countries.

The ceasefire negotiations ended in Istanbul without an "effective solution", Pakistan's information minister said on Wednesday, October 29.

Pakistan reacted furiously to the failure of the negotiations, which sources said ended in a dispute over militant groups suspected of using Afghanistan as a base to attack its security forces along the border.

"Pakistan does not need to deploy even a small fraction of its entire arsenal to completely eliminate the Taliban regime and push them back into the caves to hide," Defense Minister Khawaja Asif said in a post on X.

Dozens of people have died this month along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan in the worst violence since the Taliban took power in Kabul in 2021.

The two countries agreed to a ceasefire mediated in Doha on October 19, but were unable to find a common ground in the second round of negotiations mediated by Turkey and Qatar in Istanbul.

Each side blames each other for the failure.

"The Afghan side continues to deviate from the core issue at the basis of the start of the dialogue process," Pakistan's Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said on Wednesday, accusing him of being involved in the transfer of issues, deception, and blaming each other.

"The dialogue thus fails to produce an effective solution," he continued.

Pakistan's security sources say the Taliban are not willing to commit to controlling the Pakistani Taliban, a separate militant group hostile to Pakistan that Islamabad says operates with impunity in Afghanistan.

An Afghan source familiar with the talks said the talks ended after a " fierce debate" over the matter.

Afghans say they have no control over the Pakistani Taliban, which has launched attacks on Pakistani forces in recent weeks.