KABUL, Afghanistan — The Afghan Taliban on Thursday endorsed a clerics’ religious decree that bans using Afghan territory for attacks on other countries. The endorsement is aimed at lowering tensions with Pakistan after renewed border friction, even as a U.N. sanctions monitoring report warns that IS-K and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan remain active from inside Afghanistan, Dec. 11, 2025.
Afghan Taliban backs clerics’ decree against cross-border attacks
The decree followed a large clerics’ gathering in Kabul attended by about 1,000 religious scholars and senior officials, including prominent members of the Taliban’s judicial leadership, according to Arab News. The five-article text frames national defense as a religious obligation and instructs Afghans not to allow their soil to be used against other states, while also calling on the “Islamic Emirate” to prevent violations.
Taliban officials who spoke to the outlet described the message as both religious and political, portraying it as a response to border pressure and a signal that cross-border attacks are outside the movement’s declared policy. Analysts, however, cautioned that similar language has circulated before and that a decree alone will not settle the core dispute with Islamabad.
Pakistan has welcomed the clerics’ stance but stopped short of treating it as a breakthrough. Islamabad has long demanded enforceable steps and written guarantees that Afghan territory will not be used to stage attacks inside Pakistan. The pledge “does not explicitly name Pakistan” and its enforcement is unclear, while Pakistan remains wary given what it calls past unfulfilled commitments by the Afghan Taliban, Dawn reported.
UN warns Afghan Taliban still faces IS-K and TTP challenge
The U.N. monitoring assessment, submitted to the Security Council’s Afghanistan sanctions committee, says the de facto authorities have “suppressed — although not eliminated” ISIL-K (also known as IS-K) and that the group continues to pose threats inside Afghanistan, regionally and beyond. The report also rejects Kabul’s insistence that no terrorist groups operate from Afghan territory, calling such claims “not credible,” in the U.N. sanctions monitoring team’s latest report.
On the Pakistani Taliban, the U.N. report says TTP has carried out “numerous high-profile attacks” in Pakistan from Afghan soil, fueling cross-border military confrontations, loss of life and disruptions to trade. It calls the TTP issue the greatest short-term threat to Afghan Taliban stability and estimates that ongoing border closures have cost the Afghan economy about $1 million per day.
Those security disputes have compounded a wider breakdown in confidence between Kabul and Islamabad. A Reuters explainer has linked the latest cycle of escalation to an upsurge in militant violence in Pakistan and to stalled talks after Afghanistan resisted providing the written commitments Pakistan sought.
A signal, not a settlement
The Afghan Taliban has issued similar religious messaging in the past. In 2023, Voice of America reported that the Taliban’s supreme leader described cross-border attacks as “haram,” or forbidden, while urging followers not to wage jihad abroad.
But the gap between pronouncements and outcomes has repeatedly widened as violence persists. In March 2024, Pakistan launched strikes inside Afghanistan after blaming militants for attacks on its forces, and the Taliban condemned the action as a violation of Afghan sovereignty, Al Jazeera reported.
For neighbors and international monitors, the test now is whether the Afghan Taliban treats the clerics’ decree as a line that can be enforced in practice, including against fighters who move across the border or provide support networks from inside Afghanistan. Without verifiable steps, officials and analysts say, even a widely publicized religious ruling is unlikely to resolve the security demands that are driving the standoff.
