Pakistan tells UN rights council Taliban let terrorists operate from Afghanistan, citing 4,700 killed in three years
Pakistan has told the UN Human Rights Council that more than 4,700 Pakistanis have been killed in attacks originating from Afghanistan over three years, as a UN expert urged states not to normalise ties with Kabul.
Pakistan has told the United Nations Human Rights Council that the Afghan Taliban continue to let terrorist groups operate from Afghan soil, saying more than 4,700 Pakistanis have been killed in terrorist attacks originating from Afghanistan over the past three years. Pakistan's representative, Muhammad Jawad Ajmal, made the case during the council's interactive dialogue on Afghanistan on Thursday evening, accusing the Taliban regime of maintaining close links with terrorist organisations that operate with impunity in Afghanistan, backed by external actors targeting Pakistan and other neighbours. The Pakistani delegate linked the Taliban to the unimpeded regional operations of banned groups including the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) and its Majeed Brigade, according to reports of the session, while a statement from Pakistan's UN mission also named Daesh and Al-Qaeda among the outfits it blamed for attacks launched from Afghan territory. Pakistan also warned that it cannot sit idle in the face of what it called an externally backed terrorist onslaught from Afghanistan, asserting a right to respond in self-defence against militant networks. Ajmal cited a 16 March operation in which, he said, Pakistan precisely targeted military installations and terrorist support infrastructure, including drones and ammunition storage facilities used by the TTP to attack Pakistani civilians. Running alongside Pakistan's intervention was the report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, who told the General Assembly that five years after seizing power, the Taliban had shown no willingness to reverse systematic human rights violations and had instead deepened restrictions, particularly on women and girls. Bennett's report documented arbitrary detention, torture, sexual violence, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings, according to the coverage of his findings, and he urged member states not to normalise relations with the Kabul regime until it demonstrates verifiable improvements in human rights. Pakistan's statement drew attention to the ninth Ministerial Conference on Women hosted in Islamabad in July, at which the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation adopted the Islamabad Declaration, as an example of the diplomatic track Islamabad says it has pursued on women's rights in Afghanistan. In a separate intervention at the General Assembly on Friday, the same Pakistani delegate urged the international community to step up and shoulder its responsibility for vulnerable Afghan refugees, noting that Pakistan has hosted millions of Afghans since the Soviet invasion of 1979. Reports of that session noted the government's position that more than 2.4 million Afghan refugees have been deported since 2023. The UN exchange comes against a backdrop of renewed strain on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, where cross-border firing and retaliatory strikes have flared repeatedly in recent weeks, and where Islamabad has pressed Kabul to act against groups it says shelter on Afghan soil. What happens next will depend in part on whether the council's dialogue produces any concrete follow-up, and whether member states condition future engagement with Kabul on the rights improvements Bennett has called for. It is also possible that the exchange hardens positions on both sides, with Pakistan continuing to press its security case internationally while the Taliban administration rejects the charges, as it has in past disputes. The reports of Thursday's dialogue did not carry a detailed response from the Taliban administration to the specific casualty figure cited by Pakistan, leaving the 4,700 figure, for now, as Islamabad's claim before the UN rather than an independently verified toll.Advertisement · Google AdSense 728×90 / 320×100
