Pakistan’s defense minister threatened on Wednesday to “obliterate” the Taliban, who control neighboring Afghanistan, after negotiations for lasting peace between the two sides collapsed.
Peace talks in Istanbul, Turkey, have concluded without a “workable solution”, Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said after deadly clashes this month. Dozens of people were killed along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in the worst violence in the area since the Taliban took control of Kabul in 2021.
The negotiations ended with a disagreement over terror groups using Afghanistan as a base to attack security forces along the Pakistani border.
“Pakistan does not need to deploy even a fraction of its entire arsenal to completely eradicate the Taliban regime and push them back to the caves to hide,” Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif said on X.
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An Afghan Taliban fighter sits on a tank near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in Spin Boldak, Kandahar province, after firefights between Pakistani and Afghan forces in Afghanistan on October 15, 2025. (Reuters)
The two countries agreed to a ceasefire in Doha, Qatar, on October 19, but were unable to find common ground in a second round of talks mediated by Turkey and Qatar in Istanbul, according to Reuters.
Both countries blamed each other for the failure of the talks.
“The Afghan side continued to deviate from the core issue… on which the dialogue process was initiated,” Pakistan’s information minister said on Wednesday, accusing the Taliban of distraction, trickery and playing a “blame game”.
“The dialogue has therefore not produced any workable solution,” he said.
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Taliban security personnel walk past a damaged car in the Spin Boldak district of Kandahar province on October 16, 2025, a day after cross-border clashes between Afghanistan and Pakistan. (Getty Images)
A Pakistani security source told Reuters that the Taliban were unwilling to agree to rein in the Pakistani Taliban, a separate terror group that Pakistan says operates from Afghanistan without consequence.
An Afghan source familiar with the talks told the channel that the negotiations ended after “tense exchanges” on the issue, noting that Afghanistan claimed it had no control over the Pakistani Taliban.
The Pakistani Taliban have carried out attacks on the Pakistani army in recent weeks.
The clashes began earlier this month after Pakistani airstrikes targeted the head of the Pakistani Taliban in Kabul and other locations.
A Taliban security personnel stands guard along a road near the Ghulam Khan Zero Point Border Crossing between Afghanistan and Pakistan in Gurbuz district in southeastern Khost province on October 20, 2025. (Getty Images)
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The Taliban retaliated with attacks on Pakistani military posts along the 1,600-mile border that remains closed.
Pakistan’s defense minister said on Saturday he believed Afghanistan was seeking peace but that failure to reach an agreement in Istanbul would mean “open war”.
And despite a ceasefire between Pakistan and the Taliban, clashes this weekend resulted in the killing of five Pakistani soldiers and 25 Pakistani Taliban members near the border with Afghanistan.
Reuters contributed to this report.
