Afghan Taliban cannot absorb the punishment Pakistan can inflict, DG ISPR warns in Reuters interview, calling India the biggest terror sponsor
Pakistan’s military spokesman, Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, has warned that the Afghan Taliban lack the capacity to withstand a Pakistani response to threats from Afghan soil, and accused India of sponsoring terrorism against Pakistan.
The Afghan Taliban do not have the capability to absorb the punishment Pakistan can inflict in response to threats emanating from Afghanistan, Pakistan’s military spokesman has warned, in one of the strongest public statements yet in the current confrontation between Islamabad and Kabul. Director General of Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry gave the warning in an interview with the Reuters news agency in Rawalpindi, reported on Sunday, 1 November.
Asked about the threat from drones in Taliban hands, Chaudhry said Pakistan was ready for any attempt to test it, including with drones. “Whatever they want to send, they can; they may try. We have the capability to take them on,” he said. “They don’t have, I think, the capability to then absorb the punishment that we can put on them.” The remark was the centrepiece of the interview and was carried prominently by Pakistani outlets reporting the Reuters conversation.
Chaudhry said that whatever drone capability the Afghan Taliban possessed was not their own, but supplied by their sponsors. He went further, calling India the biggest terror sponsor in the context of the threats facing Pakistan, and saying that the Afghan Taliban and the terrorist groups operating against Pakistan were acting as Indian proxies. That accusation is one Pakistan has made before, but its repetition by the military spokesman in a Reuters interview gives it a fresh prominence at a moment of heightened tension.
The ISPR chief also accused the Afghan Taliban regime of harbouring terrorist leaders and allowing armed groups to operate from Afghan soil against Pakistan. “We only ask you that don’t support terrorism inside Pakistan. Stop harbouring the terrorist leaders,” he said. “If you do it, then there will be a cost. And we are capable of imposing that cost and we have a clear strategy how to impose that cost.” The message, in other words, was framed as a demand backed by a stated strategy, not merely as a complaint.
Chaudhry added a sweeping judgement about Afghanistan under Taliban rule. “What Afghanistan is producing right now, it has only two products: terrorism and drugs,” he said, arguing that both posed threats to the region and to the wider world. He also said Islamabad was not seeking Afghanistan’s isolation and remained engaged with Kabul, but expected the Afghan Taliban to act like a state and prevent terrorism from its territory. That combination — engagement on one hand, a warning of cost on the other — has been the consistent shape of Pakistan’s public position in recent weeks.
The interview comes against a backdrop of renewed cross-border friction. Fresh firing was reported at Torkham as Taliban and Pakistani forces clashed again, disrupting the return of Afghan migrants, and Pakistani security sources have reported shooting down drones in Balochistan. Pakistan has also warned the Afghan Taliban against making its security hostage to inaction, while the United States has acknowledged Pakistan’s concerns over cross-border terrorism from Afghanistan. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington does not want Pakistan targeted by terrorism from Afghan soil, a statement that followed Pakistan’s rejection of Taliban attempts to shift blame for terrorism.
The drone question at the heart of the interview reflects a wider regional anxiety. Drones have become a central feature of conflicts across West Asia, and the possibility that groups in Afghanistan could use them against Pakistan has been raised repeatedly by Pakistani officials. Chaudhry’s answer was designed to close that question down: Pakistan, he argued, can counter the threat, and the side that tries it would face consequences it cannot absorb. Whether that assessment is shared by independent analysts is a separate question, and the interview did not offer technical detail about Pakistan’s counter-drone capabilities.
The accusation against India will also draw attention in New Delhi, which has consistently rejected Pakistani allegations that it sponsors terrorism. No immediate Indian response to this specific interview was reported in the Pakistani coverage of the conversation, and the Afghan Taliban authorities had not, in that coverage, issued a detailed reply to Chaudhry’s warning. The absence of an immediate rebuttal does not mean none will come, but it does mean the interview currently stands as Pakistan’s framing of the confrontation, unanswered in the public record so far.
For Pakistan’s domestic audience, the interview serves a dual purpose. It reassures a public anxious about cross-border attacks that the military has both the capability and a strategy to respond, and it places responsibility for the current tension squarely on Kabul and, in Chaudhry’s account, on New Delhi. For the Afghan Taliban, it is a public warning that further attacks from Afghan soil will carry a cost, delivered through an international news agency rather than through a closed diplomatic channel.
What happens next is likely to be decided at the border and in diplomatic contacts rather than in interviews. If cross-border firing and drone incidents continue, Chaudhry’s warning will be tested against events, and Pakistan will face the question of what form its promised cost takes. If the firing eases and talks resume, the interview may instead be remembered as a moment of maximum public pressure before a de-escalation. Either way, the Reuters interview has set the terms of the current debate in unusually plain language, and both Kabul and New Delhi will be watched for their replies in the coming days.
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