Former Afghan Vice President Amrullah Saleh said Pakistan is directing its anger at the wrong targets in its fight against terrorism and is refusing to confront the roots of its security crisis.
“Terrorism has come to your cities, but you are refusing to acknowledge the root cause of it,” Saleh said in comments posted after Tuesday’s suicide bombing in Islamabad, which killed 12 people and wounded 27. The attack occurred in the parking area of a judicial complex.
Saleh said that despite repeated warnings that have since proved accurate, Pakistani officials have responded with insults and accusations instead of reassessing their policies. He argued that Pakistan has failed to learn from its mistakes between 1994 and 2024 and continues to pursue the same strategies under new labels.
He said the roots of terrorism in Pakistan lie in what he called the country’s historic mistake of using “jihad” as an instrument of national policy. He added that Pakistan still does not classify the Taliban as a terrorist group, even though, he said, it is no different from Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
Saleh accused Pakistan of helping install the Taliban regime in Afghanistan by destroying the Afghan Republic from within, and said that instead of taking a moral stance and mobilising the international community to address the crisis at its core, Pakistani authorities have shifted to ethnic games involving Tajiks and Pashtuns.
He urged Pakistan’s leadership to examine its own internal situation and to use its political and military resources to counter the Taliban threat and protect people across the region, rather than repeating past policy failures.
