Pakistan Army Spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor Thursday confirmed that the drone strike on January 24 near tribal areas targeted a terrorist who morphed into Afghan refugee's camp. Emphasizing upon the elimination of terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistan, the director general of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) stated that the strike in Spin Thall, Hangu district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was not on any organized terrorist sanctuary.
According to the ISPR, 43 Afghan refugees' camps/complexes out of 54 are in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with others in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). He said that the incident validates Pakistan's stance that the leftover terrorists easily morph into Afghan refugees' camps/complexes. The ISPR director general said, "The early and dignified return to Afghanistan is essential. Pakistan's brotherly hospitality to peaceful Afghan refugees must not be exploited by the terrorists."
According to the Ministry of States and Frontier Regions (SAFRON), there are 1.4 million registered Afghans who lost refugee status and got the extension of one year till December 2018 to continue their legal stay in Pakistan. Afghan refugees have already availed extension in their stay five times.
They said that hardly 48,000 refugees went back to their country under the voluntary return program in 2017 as compared to repatriation of around 400,000 refugees in 2016. In addition, around 200,000 undocumented Afghan nationals also returned to their country in the same year.
Recently on December 28 while referring to the United States' demands to act against the alleged presence of terrorist elements in Pakistan, General Ghafoor clarified, "No organized infrastructure of any banned organization is present in Pakistan. We have fought an imposed and imported war twice in Pakistan and now we cannot do any more for anyone." "There are no facilitators [of terrorist groups] in Pakistan and we have gone a long way towards supporting peace in the region," he maintained.
Earlier on Thursday, Spokesperson Foreign Office Dr Muhammad Faisal said that Pakistan sticks to its stance that the recent US drone strike targeted an Afghan refugee camp near Kurram Agency. He was responding to a statement by the US Embassy earlier in the day which denied Pakistan's claim that the drone strike struck an Afghan refugee camp.
Pakistan had on Wednesday condemned the drone strike conducted by coalition forces near Kurram Agency and called the unilateral action detrimental to the spirit of cooperation between the two countries in the fight against terrorism. Reportedly this is the third drone strike in Spin Tal in recent months and the first condemnation by the Foreign Office after the killing of Taliban Chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour by a drone in Balochistan on May 22, 2016.
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