RASC News Agency: Fresh revelations from Pakistan Today have exposed yet another dark facet of the Taliban’s duplicity: the Afghanistani Taliban are directly financing their ideological twin, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). According to the report, the Taliban regime in Kabul has been transferring $43,000 every month nearly three million Kabuli rupees to the family of Noor Wali Mehsud, the current leader of TTP. Pakistani security sources allege that these funds are being used to purchase weapons, build militant infrastructure, and orchestrate cross-border attacks against Pakistani territory. What makes this disclosure even more alarming is not merely the financial figures, but the historical and ideological intimacy binding the Taliban of Afghanistan and their Pakistani counterparts. Despite being geographically separated by the Durand Line, the two groups have long operated as extensions of one another, sharing training camps, fighters, and an extremist worldview rooted in a rigid, militant interpretation of Islam.
For decades, the Durand Line has functioned less as an international border and more as a porous corridor of insurgency a passageway where Taliban commanders, weapons, and madrassa-trained foot soldiers moved freely between Afghanistan’s eastern provinces, including Kunar, Nangarhar, Paktika, and Khost, and Pakistan’s tribal belt. This unbroken chain of cooperation has deeply unsettled regional governments, which now view the Afghanistani Taliban’s regime not as a stabilizing authority but as a state sponsor of terrorism in disguise. While Afghanistani Taliban leaders publicly deny any material support for TTP dismissing Islamabad’s repeated accusations as “Pakistan’s internal problem” their covert financial lifelines to the group reveal a different reality. Observers stress that the differences between the Afghanistani Taliban and TTP are cosmetic at best: one seeks international legitimacy by masquerading as a government, while the other wages open war on Islamabad. Both, however, draw sustenance from the same ideological roots and the same network of cross-border loyalties.
The latest expose by Pakistan Today reignites a critical question that has haunted the region for years: Can the Taliban in Kabul ever truly sever themselves from the shadow of their Pakistani counterparts, or are the two destined to remain inseparable two faces of the same extremist coin? For Afghanistan itself, this revelation is damning. Instead of channeling scarce resources into food, schools, or hospitals for a starving population, the Taliban’s ruling elite funnel funds into weapons and bloodshed beyond their borders. In doing so, they not only betray the Afghanistani people but also confirm what human rights defenders, analysts, and citizens have long argued: the Taliban are not a government, but a cartel of warlords, mercenaries, and ideologues whose loyalty lies with jihad, not with nationhood.
