The latest UN Security Council monitoring report finds that the Afghan Taliban continued to support the TTP—including with advanced equipment, weapons licences and travel documents—while the group escalated attacks on Pakistan, even as Taliban leaders publicly denied harbouring terrorists. 

At the same time, the report records limited attempts by the Taliban leadership to rein in the TTP, such as relocating about 2,000 fighters and families away from the border and issuing back-channel warnings, efforts that failed to curb the group’s violence. 

The contradiction suggests the Taliban is not a unitary actor fully able to control its wartime networks; support and restraint operate at different levels of the movement, meaning Kabul may be able to promise more on the TTP than it can reliably deliver.

The headline finding of the United Nations Security Council’s newest monitoring report is not a surprise. Released on 10 August and covering the period from December 2025 to June 2026, the 38th report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team states that the Afghan Taliban continued their support to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, that the TTP escalated its attacks, and that the Taliban continued publicly to deny harbouring any terrorist groups. Islamabad has argued this for four years. The monitoring team has now said it again.

The more revealing material sits further down. During the same six months in which the Taliban were sustaining the TTP, the Taliban leadership also tried to rein it in, and failed. Read together, these findings describe something more troubling than complicity. They describe a regime that supplies a militant group it can no longer reliably command.

Two findings that do not sit comfortably together

The evidence of restraint is specific. According to the monitoring team, the Afghan authorities relocated approximately 2,000 TTP fighters and their families away from the Pakistani border and further inside Afghanistan, an effort the report frames as seeking to rein in the group. More striking still, the Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada reportedly warned the TTP leadership through back-channel communications to halt attacks targeting Pakistan or risk losing Taliban........

© Eurasia Review