Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif has warned Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers about concentrating on terrorist hideouts contained in the war-torn neighbouring nation if the latter had been unable to rein in anti-Pakistan militants.
He had earlier mentioned that the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) had been utilizing Afghan soil for finishing up assaults in Pakistan.
In an interview with Voice of America, the defence minister mentioned that in his go to to Afghanistan in late-February, he reminded the Taliban administration to reside as much as their cross-border safety commitments forbidding terrorists from utilizing Afghan soil to plan and conduct assaults on Pakistan or Islamabad will take motion, Dawn newspaper reported on Thursday.
“We have communicated to Kabul during our last visit that please, as our neighbours and brothers, whatever is emanating from Afghan soil is your responsibility,” he mentioned.
“If that is not done, at some point we’ll have to (…) resort to some measures, which will definitely – wherever (terrorists) are, their sanctuaries on Afghan soil – we’ll have to hit them,” he mentioned. “We’ll have to hit them because we cannot tolerate this situation for long.” Asif went on to say that the Afghans responded to this ”rather well”.
“They responded well, really well. Perhaps for them to disentangle the TTP from this stage – of course they want to disentangle, this is my impression [that] they want to disentangle — but this disentanglement, perhaps, will take time.
“But they are doing well and we wish them well and we don’t want to get into a situation where this situation with the [TTP] escalates and we do something that is not to the liking of our neighbours and brothers in Kabul.” During the interview, Asif was requested whether or not he believed the Taliban’s declare that the TTP weren’t utilizing Afghan soil to hold out assaults in Pakistan. “They still operate from their soil,” he replied.
Asif was additionally requested about his assertion that the TTP had been utilizing weapons left behind by the US forces in Afghanistan. “Have you provided any evidence of that to the Americans?” the interviewer requested.
“It can be seen all over the place. On the streets of Kabul, I saw it myself,” the minister responded. He mentioned that the TTP had been utilizing “light weapons, assault rifles, ammunition, night vision goggles and sniper rifles” which had been left behind by US troops.
When requested whether or not this level had been raised with the Americans, Asif mentioned: “What is the use of talking to Washington? They left that sort of hardware on foreign soil because they couldn’t carry it.” The interviewer identified that the US State Department’s response to Pakistan’s assertion was that they didn’t have “an independent assessment”. She additionally requested whether or not Islamabad wanted the assistance of the US in preventing terrorism in Pakistan.
“I do not see any logic in that,” the minister mentioned. “My personal view is that we can take care of this […] menace ourselves,” Asif mentioned, citing the examples of Zarb-i-Azb and Raddul Fassad, the 2 main operations by the Pakistan military towards militants.
He additionally termed the resurgence in terrorism within the nation to be a “grave mistake” by the earlier Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf authorities, in line with the reported interview.
In November final yr, the TTP referred to as off an indefinite ceasefire agreed with the Pakistan authorities in June 2022 and ordered its militants to hold out assaults on the safety forces.
The TTP, which is believed to have shut hyperlinks to al-Qaeda, has up to now additionally threatened to focus on Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari if the ruling coalition continued to implement strict measures towards the militants.
The TTP, also called the Pakistan Taliban, was arrange as an umbrella group of a number of militant outfits in 2007. Its fundamental intention is to impose its strict model of Islam throughout Pakistan.
The group has been blamed for a number of lethal assaults throughout Pakistan, together with an assault on military headquarters in 2009, assaults on army bases and the 2008 bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad.
Read all of the Latest News right here
(This story has not been edited by News18 workers and is printed from a syndicated information company feed)
