Pak Army Chief Says Banned Outfits Enjoy “Sanctuary, Liberty of Action” on Afghan Soil

Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Syed Asim Munir expressed his country’s concerns over the presence of sanctuaries available to banned terror outfits and liberty of action they enjoy on Afghan soil.

However, COAS warned that Pakistan will spare no effort to dismantle terrorist networks and protect its citizens at all costs.

“Terrorism has no place in Pakistan and the involvement of Afghan nationals in terrorist incidents in Pakistan is detrimental to regional peace, stability and deviation from the Doha Peace Agreement by the interim Afghan Government” COAS reiterated on Monday.

The Pakistan army chief’s statement comes close on the heels of the statements by its deputy foreign minister and even his country’s prime minister of the involvement of Afghans in terrorist activities on its soil.

Pakistan’s Deputy Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Kahar recently claimed that some Afghans were involved in a number of bloody attacks in the country’s cities, while Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has expressed concerns over the “liberty of action available” to terrorists in Afghanistan, urging the Taliban-led interim government to take action to stop “transnational terrorism”.

Pakistan COAS was in Peshawar to meet tribal elders from Newly Merged Districts (NMDs) of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and thanked them for their help in defeating menace of terrorism.

Since the Taliban surged back to power in Afghanistan two years ago, Pakistan has witnessed a dramatic uptick in militant attacks focused on its western border regions, claimed by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Daesh and other terror outfits.