Afghan Soil Used To Foment Violence Against Pakistan, Says Pak Interior Minister
Sarfraz Bugti, Pakistan's Acting Interior Minister, has once again criticised the use of Afghan soil to foment violence against Pakistan.
Sarfraz Bugti, Pakistan's Acting Interior Minister, has once again criticised the use of Afghan soil to foment violence against Pakistan.
Bugti said that the attack on Chitral last week had been organised in Afghanistan, but it is not yet known whether Afghan nationals had also been involved in the attack.
He was referring to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan’s (TTP) attack on Wednesday, September 6, in Chitral of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa state, due to which several Pakistani soldiers were killed.
During a press conference in Islamabad, Bugti expressed hope that the Afghan Taliban will implement the Doha Agreement and ensure that the Afghan soil is not used against any other country.
Referring to the identity of the attackers in Chitral, this Pakistani official added, "It doesn't matter who waged this attack. For us, they are all terrorists."
Bugti said that the increase in terror attacks is not so high that it will panic Islamabad. He stressed that the government will not allow anyone to impose their will by force.
Following the attack on Chitral, last week a spokesperson of the TTP called the attack a "major operation" and claimed that they have captured several villages.
Chitral shares a border with Kunar, Nuristan and Badakhshan provinces of Afghanistan.
Sources confirmed to Afghanistan International that Taliban arrested Mohammad Hamza Mujadadi, a former security forces member, in Parwan province on Sunday.
According to sources, Mujadadi was a member of Afghanistan’s Presidential Protection Service (PPS) during the previous regime.
Taliban has not commented on the issue yet.
Sources said that Mujadadi had been arrested in Khwaja Siaran village of Parwan province. His father is Abdul Latif Mujadadi, who was the deputy director of investigations for National Security Directorate [intelligence] in Parwan.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) had recently reported that the Taliban continues to arrest former soldiers, especially in Kabul and Panjshir.
UNAMA had said that it has recorded extrajudicial killings of former employees and security forces members of the previous government in different provinces.
Abdul Salam Hanafi, Taliban’s Deputy Prime Minister, responded to international criticisms of the media censorship and restrictions in Afghanistan and said that the media is free under the Taliban government.
However, Hanafi stressed that they accept media freedom only within the "framework of the [Taliban] Islamic system and national interests”.
During the past two years, organisations supporting human rights and journalism have expressed their concerns about the deteriorating media situation in Afghanistan.
On September 5, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) denounced the suppression of journalists in Afghanistan under the Taliban control and called for the immediate release of all media workers in Afghanistan.
The organisation added that the detention of journalists has increased in Afghanistan.
On Sunday, reacting to the criticisms, Hanafi in the presence of the media personnel, said, "Here the microphones [of various media outlets] are placed in front of us. There are different definitions of press freedom. We definitely do not have a problem with the freedom of the press and speech, if it is within the Islamic [Taliban] framework and our national interests."
The Taliban, especially the group’s intelligence agency, has been accused of censoring domestic media operations as well as threatening and arresting journalists.
IFJ said that since the Taliban’s takeover of power in Afghanistan, media activity in the country has been significantly restricted.
With the Taliban in power and the collapse of many media outlets, journalists have been subjected to arbitrary arrest and have faced severe economic difficulties.
As per a Jamestown Foundation research paper, since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, the security situation in Pakistan has worsened over the past two years, especially the Baloch separatist insurgency.
It reported a 73 percent increase in militants and a 138 percent increase in casualties in Pakistan in the past two years, with Baluchistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa states most affected.
Since the Taliban took over Kabul, the Baloch separatist insurgency in the southwestern province of Baluchistan has taken on a more "dangerous" form, the foundation said.
Pakistan is once again experiencing a wave of killings, bombings, suicide attacks and targeted attacks on police, military and government officials, the report stated.
Pakistan's southwestern and northern provinces, which border Afghanistan, have repeatedly been subjected to devastating militant attacks, it added. As the Foundation put it, 2022 was "one of the bloodiest years”. There have been more than 376 terrorist attacks in Pakistan this year.
However, militant groups have increased their operations in 2023. A deadly militant attack on June 30 this year killed 101 Pakistani officers. According to the Jamestown Foundation research paper, at least 389 people were killed and 656 injured in the first half of this year by terrorist and suicide attacks in Pakistan.
Separatist violence has increased dramatically, and women have also been involved in suicide bombings, the foundation added.
Jamestown Foundation has called the rise in the number of female suicide bombers alarming.
The foundation said that the capital of Baluchistan provided many opportunities for the Taliban, criminals, drug traffickers and human traffickers during the US-led war in Afghanistan.
In addition, the Jamestown Foundation in the article also noted Pakistan's shift in view of the Taliban. The foundation added that Pakistan, at the beginning of the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan on August 15, 2021, interpreted the incident as a "positive development for Pakistan's security environment”.
However, two years after the Taliban took over Afghanistan, the security situation in the country has worsened, contrary to what Pakistani officials thought.
The increased activity of militant groups in Pakistan has increased the rhetorical tension between the Pakistani authorities and the Taliban, it added.
Abbas Stanikzai, Taliban's deputy foreign minister for political affairs, said that members of the international coalition which had a military presence in Afghanistan have an obligation to return to the country.
Stanikzai stressed that these countries had utilised various kinds of weapons in Afghanistan.
During a ceremony, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of private airlines, KamAir, in Afghanistan, he said that according to the Doha Agreement, the countries that had military troops in Afghanistan are "obliged" to return to the country and participate in the reconstruction of it.
According to the Taliban-controlled Radio Television Afghanistan (RTA), Stanikzai said that the group has fulfilled the responsibility of safely evacuating foreign forces, and now it is the West's responsibility to fulfil its promises regarding the revival of institutions in Afghanistan.
Stanikzai was the Taliban's chief negotiator during the group's peace talks with the United States in Doha.
Months after the Taliban's takeover of power in Afghanistan in 2021, Stanikzai had said that he hoped that the US will reopen its Embassy in Kabul.
In 2021, Stanikzai had also announced that based on the Doha agreement, the US had committed that the country's embassy would remain open and active in Kabul.
At that time, he had added, "It is the responsibility of the world, especially the United States, to take an active part in the reconstruction of Afghanistan. As they destroyed our economy in the last twenty years, now it is their duty to return and take an active part in the reconstruction of the country's economy."
Stanikzai had also said that when US returns to Afghanistan, European countries will also open its embassies in Kabul.
However, despite repeated requests by the Taliban over the past two years, no government in the world has officially recognised the group's government in Afghanistan.
The European Union has a representative in Afghanistan to provide humanitarian aid, but the embassies of the European countries and the United States remain closed in Afghanistan.
Al-Mersaad, a media outlet affiliated with the Taliban, reported that 12 members of ISIS-K have been arrested in Badakhshan province by the group.
The Taliban media claimed that these people are key members of ISIS-K and were involved in attacks in Badakhshan province over the last two years.
According to the reports, the Taliban operation against ISIS-K forces in Badakhshan had been completed in four days.
The report quoted Taliban officials as saying that as the result of the operation, 12 ISIS-K members had been arrested and two AK-47 and 2,865 ammunitions, bombs, explosives and other technical equipment were seized.
The identity of the arrested persons and the exact location of the alleged operation against ISIS-K have not been announced.
Tajikistan, which shares the border with Badakhshan, has repeatedly announced that ISIS-K has thousands of members in Afghanistan and that terrorist groups in Afghanistan are a threat to the security of the region.
Last week, the National Security Committee of Tajikistan had announced that three members of an international terrorist organisation had entered Tajikistan from Afghanistan and were killed by the country's forces.
Ruslan Seissembayev, Deputy of National Security Committee of Kazakhstan, on Friday said that ISIS-K has around 6000 ISIS members in Afghanistan.
This Kazakh official stressed that Taliban has failed to provide security and that Afghanistan is still the hub for international terrorist groups.