EDITORIAL: Reiterating on Thursday its demand that the Kabul government rein in the self-styled Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) ensconced on its soil, Islamabad called for “immediate and effective action” against that terrorist outfit, and handing over to Pakistan its leadership and those individuals who have been involved in terrorist activities inside this country.
Pakistan has regularly been sharing intelligence-based evidence with the Afghan authorities of TTP hideouts in that country, backed by various international assessment reports that as many as 4,000 TTP militants are present in that country. Yet the new rulers of Kabul continue to provide safe havens to their ideological brothers, insisting they are all in Pakistan. Now a fresh report submitted to the special UN Security Council Committee by ISIL (also known as Daesh) and Al Qaeda/Taliban Monitoring Team details how the Afghan Taliban support the TTP, which has become an umbrella for various terrorist groups making their country a terrorist hellscape.
Substantiating Pakistan’s position, the report notes that despite Afghan Taliban’s official stance of discouraging TTP activities outside that country, its fighters have engaged in cross-border attacks in Pakistan without facing any substantial repercussions. Although the Kabul government temporarily imprisoned some 70 to 2000 TTP members and moved many others northward, away from the border with Pakistan in an effort to alleviate this country’s pressure to tackle them, TTP members and their families are said to receive regular aid packages from the Afghan Taliban. The report goes on to point out that the formation of TJP (Tehreek-i-Jihad Pakistan) as a front to provide the TTP with plausible deniability and the involvement of other groups like the ETM/TIP (East Turkestan Islamic Movement and Turkestan Islamic Party) and Majid Brigade in joint operations, underscores the multifaceted and transnational threat posed by these militant alliances. Notably, both the ETM and TIP, separatist Muslim groups from the Chinese province of Xinjiang, present a security challenge for Beijing. According to the UN report, the Kabul government has shifted these two groups from Badakhshan to Baghlan province, expanding their operational reach across a wider region. Budding informal diplomatic and formal economic links between the two countries, however, suggest the Taliban have made a significant effort to address Beijing’s security concerns.
Frustrating as it has been for Pakistan, the Afghan Taliban’s lack of seriousness to deal with the TTP, it should continue to strive for resolving the issue bilaterally. At the same time, it needs to seek the support of other neighbours of Afghanistan, especially China, to exert pressure on the Kabul government to sort out the TTP. Considering its tight embrace with the terrorist entity, it is unlikely to hand over the wanted terrorists, but what it can and ought to do is to integrate them into their own society. Else, Pakistan could use its option of eliminating them via drone strikes.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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