Pakistan and China issued a joint statement calling for more “visible and verifiable” steps to eliminate terrorist organizations based in Afghanistan and to prevent Afghan territory from being used for militancy against other countries.
The statement was issued Monday after talks between Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar and China’s top diplomat Wang Yi, who met in Beijing on Dec. 4, according to the Associated Press report.
In the statement, the two countries said “terrorist groups operating from Afghanistan continue to pose serious threats to regional and global security” and stressed the need to prevent them from using Afghan soil to carry out attacks against other countries. There was no immediate response reported from Afghanistan’s government in Kabul.
China also praised Pakistan for what it described as “comprehensive counterterrorism measures” and for protecting Chinese citizens and projects tied to the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor, part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The corridor, as described in the report, includes road and rail improvements connecting China’s western Xinjiang region and Pakistan’s Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea.
The AP report said thousands of Chinese workers and engineers have been engaged in CPEC-related projects involving those transport link upgrades. It also cited an incident in 2024 in which five Chinese people were killed when a suicide car bomber hit a bus in northwest Pakistan.
The joint statement came amid broader regional diplomatic movement that has not translated into visible progress, the report said. In August, top diplomats from Pakistan, China and Afghanistan met in Kabul and pledged to work toward extending CPEC to Afghanistan, but the effort “has not visibly advanced,” according to the AP account.
On counterterrorism, the report said Pakistan has repeatedly accused Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers of sheltering the outlawed Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, which has been blamed for attacks inside Pakistan that have increased since 2021. The AP report also said the TTP is separate from Afghanistan’s Taliban, which has governed the country since 2021 and says it does not allow its territory to be used for attacks against other countries.
The statement followed persistent tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan that the AP report traced to early October airstrikes carried out by Pakistan. Pakistan conducted what it described as airstrikes on Pakistani Taliban hideouts inside Afghanistan, killing dozens of alleged insurgents, the report said, and Afghan forces retaliated by targeting Pakistani military posts.
Afghan forces claimed to have killed 58 Pakistani soldiers, according to the AP report, while Pakistan acknowledged losing 23 troops. The fighting stopped after Qatar brokered a ceasefire in Doha, and the report said subsequent talks in Istanbul failed to produce additional results.