RASC News Agency: Amid rising border tensions and escalating rhetoric between Pakistan and the Taliban regime, Khalid Zadran, the spokesperson for the Taliban’s security command in Kabul, issued an incendiary warning that if Pakistan dares to carry out a military strike inside Afghanistan, the Taliban would respond “with equal force.”
In a statement dripping with bravado, Zadran declared that any Pakistani rocket strike would be met “rocket for rocket,” and any air assault would receive “a parallel aerial response.” His remarks, however, have been widely dismissed by regional analysts as a hollow attempt to project power and divert public attention from the Taliban’s deepening internal crises a regime struggling under economic collapse, social unrest, and the near-total loss of domestic legitimacy.
Security experts argue that the Taliban’s threats are not a reflection of strength, but of desperation. Having alienated the international community through their relentless repression of women, persecution of minorities, and the dismantling of democratic institutions, the Taliban are now attempting to manufacture an external enemy to mask their own failures. This pattern using militaristic posturing to conceal political decay has become a defining feature of the Taliban’s rule since their violent takeover of Kabul in 2021.
“Zadran’s rhetoric is nothing more than political theatre,” said a senior regional security analyst speaking to RASC News Agency from Islamabad. “The Taliban know they are incapable of matching Pakistan militarily, but they use threats to distract their population from economic despair and their collapsing governance structure.”
Despite the Taliban’s claims of readiness for retaliation, their forces remain severely under-equipped and disorganized. Analysts point out that the group lacks an air force, modern artillery, or any credible air-defense capability making their talk of “aerial responses” both absurd and self-delusional. Pakistan, by contrast, possesses a sophisticated military apparatus with precision drone systems, advanced fighter jets, and decades of professional combat experience assets the Taliban can only dream of matching.
Experts further note that the Taliban’s attempt to portray themselves as defenders of Afghanistani sovereignty rings hollow, given their long-standing dependence on Pakistan’s military and intelligence establishment. For decades, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) nurtured, financed, and sheltered Taliban networks as instruments of regional influence. Now, with the relationship deteriorating over Islamabad’s growing confrontation with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Taliban find themselves trapped in an uncomfortable paradox caught between the illusion of independence and the reality of subservience.
“Taliban leaders are trying to rewrite their relationship with Pakistan by feigning defiance,” said an Afghan political analyst based in Kabul. “But this defiance is a desperate performance. The truth is that the Taliban cannot exist without Pakistan’s logistical, financial, and intelligence support.”
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s frustration with the Taliban regime has grown sharply as cross-border attacks by the TTP intensify. Islamabad accuses the Taliban of providing sanctuary to militants responsible for deadly assaults on Pakistani security forces an accusation the Taliban routinely deny, even as evidence mounts of the TTP’s active operations from Afghanistani soil.
The Taliban’s aggressive rhetoric, therefore, does not signal confidence; it reveals the insecurity of a regime increasingly isolated and internally divided. Observers say the Taliban’s leadership, fractured between hardline clerics in Kandahar and pragmatic factions in Kabul, is seeking to reassert control through populist nationalism an approach that risks pushing Afghanistan into another cycle of conflict.
As regional powers like China, Iran, and Russia watch uneasily, the Taliban’s confrontational stance toward Pakistan threatens to unravel the fragile security fabric of South and Central Asia. Beijing, in particular, which seeks stability to protect its economic corridor projects through Pakistan, has privately urged the Taliban to avoid provocative actions that could ignite a broader regional conflict.
Yet, the Taliban appear incapable of such restraint. Their governance is driven not by diplomacy or strategy, but by ideological rigidity and political insecurity. Every blustering statement, such as Zadran’s threat of retaliation, exposes the widening cracks in a regime that rules by fear but governs without legitimacy.
Ultimately, analysts warn that if the Taliban continue down this reckless path, Afghanistan could once again become the epicenter of regional instability a breeding ground not only for extremism but also for geopolitical confrontation. What Zadran calls “retaliation” is, in truth, the desperate cry of a regime losing its grip on power, trapped between the ghosts of its past alliances and the realities of its own political decay.
