New Delhi: Four days after the latest Pakistani airstrikes inside Afghanistan, the Moscow Format failed to adopt a joint statement on Monday (October 5), with Afghanistan and Pakistan unable to agree on language concerning terrorism, even as Russia insisted that the regional dialogue mechanism remained relevant.Russia’s President’s Special Representative for Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov said he was “surprised” at objections from the Afghan delegation. “In drafting the final joint statement, we encountered one problem, the problem of contradictions between our Afghan and Pakistani colleagues,” Kabulov told reporters, according to Russia’s state-run TASS news agency. “We regret this.”India participated in the meeting, with Ambassador to Russia Vinay Kumar and Joint Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs M. Suresh Kumar representing New Delhi. The Indian embassy in Moscow said India remained committed to the welfare of the Afghan people and supported Afghan “sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity”.The Moscow Format was established as a regional mechanism for consultations on Afghanistan involving Russia, Afghanistan, India, Iran, China and Pakistan, and subsequently expanded to include the Central Asian states. This year’s meeting brought together representatives from Afghanistan, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, with Belarus and Egypt attending as guests.The Afghan delegation was led by Taliban foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, who participated for the second consecutive year as an official member of the Moscow Format.Speaking to the media, Kabulov said the Afghan delegation objected to the draft because Afghanistan was mentioned “too often” in a terrorist context. “Frankly speaking, this surprised us because the same words and expressions were in last year’s text, [following] the seventh meeting. Nevertheless, the Afghans believe that the situation in bilateral relations has changed since then, and this passage is unacceptable this year,” he stated.He added that though a final declaration would traditionally have been desirable, the format was primarily intended as a mechanism for regional coordination rather than a forum for resolving bilateral disputes. “The Moscow Format can continue to work and live without this joint statement,” said Kabulov.Pakistan had initially welcomed the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, but relations subsequently deteriorated as attacks by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and other militant groups intensified inside Pakistan. Islamabad has accused the Taliban authorities of providing militants with safe haven in Afghanistan. The Taliban government has denied the accusation and said militancy inside Pakistan is Islamabad’s own home-grown problem.The dispute has repeatedly led to Pakistan airstrikes across the border. Fighting intensified after a Pakistani airstrike on Kabul in October 2025, with subsequent clashes killing hundreds. A Chinese-mediated process produced a ceasefire in March 2026, but failed to resolve the underlying dispute over militancy.After nearly three months of relative calm, Pakistan resumed airstrikes in September, saying it was targeting militant hideouts and retaliating for attacks launched from Afghanistan. Kabul denied sending drones and said Afghan casualties were civilians. The latest strikes came on Oct 1, when Pakistan targeted Kunar and Helmand provinces. The Taliban said three houses were hit and nine people, including women and children, were killed. The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said at least ten civilians, most of them children, were killed and nine injured. Pakistan said it had targeted terrorist hideouts and killed 22 “terrorists”. In his remarks in Moscow, Pakistan’s special representative for Afghanistan Mohammad Sadiq accused the Taliban government of failing to act against terrorist groups operating from Afghan soil and said terrorism remained “at the core of Afghanistan’s problems”.Sadiq listed the TTP, Balochistan Liberation Army, Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement, Islamic State Khorasan Province and Al Qaeda among groups that he said operated with impunity from Afghanistan. He claimed that more than 4,700 Pakistanis had been killed in terrorism “emanating from Afghanistan” over the past three years. “No country would tolerate such a situation,” Sadiq said.He defended Pakistan’s military operations inside Afghanistan as “precise, intelligence-based and defensive in nature”, saying they were an exercise of Pakistan’s right to self-defence.The Afghan foreign minister, as per Tolo News, accused Islamabad of using military pressure against Afghanistan and violating the country’s sovereignty. He also stated that security, political and economic issues between the two countries should be resolved through dialogue and diplomacy.Earlier, opening Monday’s meeting, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov presented a largely positive assessment of the Taliban government’s record since its return to power in August 2021. He said the Taliban-led government had taken control of Afghanistan’s territory and was governing it “with a fair degree of success”.Lavrov said Afghan security forces were conducting an “uncompromising fight” against Islamic State and other terrorist groups, claiming that hundreds of militants had been eliminated and several high-profile attacks, including those targeting foreign nationals and diplomatic missions, had been prevented.He also highlighted the Taliban government’s campaign against drug trafficking, citing UN estimates that opiate production had declined by 90 percent since 2022.At the same time, Lavrov acknowledged the continuing humanitarian crisis, saying more than 17 million Afghans could face food shortages during the coming winter and that 22 million people would require humanitarian assistance.Lavrov also reiterated Moscow’s opposition to any attempt to establish Western military infrastructure in Afghanistan or neighbouring countries, saying such a presence was “categorically unacceptable” and risked destabilising the region.The position echoed the joint declaration adopted at last year’s Moscow Format meeting. At the seventh meeting in October 2025, the participating countries called attempts by countries to deploy military infrastructure in Afghanistan and neighbouring states “unacceptable”.