Terrorism Is Reloading In Afghanistan – OpEd

At the United Nations and other global forums, Pakistan has been sounding the alarm: a new era of terrorism is taking shape on its western frontier, powered not by ideology alone but by something far more lethal—abandoned American weapons, porous borders, and an international community unwilling to act.

Groups like the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), and the Majeed Brigade—all designated terrorist organizations—are operating with impunity from Afghan soil. These groups, according to Islamabad, are not just surviving; they are evolving—weaponized by a lethal cocktail of leftover U.S. military equipment, black market arms, and alleged backing by hostile state actors, particularly India.

Pakistan’s warnings are not hypothetical. Over the past year, dozens of security personnel have died in cross-border attacks launched by these Afghan-based militants. Sophisticated weaponry—thermal scopes, M4 rifles, rocket launchers, and encrypted communication tools—left behind after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, are now routinely recovered from militants neutralized during Pakistani operations. These aren’t the tools of ragtag insurgents. These are the spoils of a collapsed empire, now repurposed for terror.

The international community’s silence is not just negligent—it is complicit.

At the United Nations, Pakistani diplomats have laid out a sobering case: the illicit flow of advanced arms into terrorist hands is not an accident of war but part of a deliberate pattern. They have accused India of covertly financing and arming anti-Pakistan groups via Afghan soil—a charge New Delhi flatly denies, but one that echoes too consistently across intelligence reports and intercepted communications to be dismissed out of hand.

Meanwhile, the Taliban-led Afghan government continues to deny that its territory is being used to stage attacks on Pakistan, even as militant leaders operate openly in eastern provinces, and video messages of claimed responsibility for attacks are broadcast with impunity. Kabul’s inaction is fraying already brittle bilateral ties and threatening to unravel what little regional stability remains.

But the issue extends beyond Islamabad and Kabul. The unchecked proliferation of illicit arms across South and Central Asia poses a dire threat to global security and development. Every cross-border attack on Pakistani soil undermines its internal security, weakens investor confidence, and deepens the socio-economic wounds that extremism thrives upon.

Pakistan’s message is clear: if the world remains silent, it will soon reap what it sows.

Islamabad is now urging the United Nations to take urgent steps: enforce sanctions on states backing terror proxies, investigate the global networks fueling the illicit arms trade, and establish a robust mechanism to trace and recover U.S.-origin weapons now in terrorist hands. Most importantly, Pakistan wants recognition of its sacrifices—over 80,000 lives lost, billions in economic damage, and two decades of battling terrorism alone.

The so-called war on terror cannot be selectively waged. When American weapons fuel attacks on Pakistani soldiers, when sanctioned groups exploit Afghan safe havens, and when global powers look the other way, it sends a dangerous message: some victims of terrorism matter more than others.

Pakistan is not just asking for solidarity—it is demanding accountability. And until the world answers, the black market of terror will keep rearming in the shadows.