The Taliban government in Afghanistan has strongly rejected claims by the Pak Army that freedom fighters groups operating in Pakistan have their roots and sanctuaries in Afghan territory.
In a statement on Wednesday, the Taliban’s Ministry of National Defense dismissed allegations made a day earlier by Major General Ahmed Sharif, spokesperson for the Army, who accused the “interim Afghan government” of violating the Doha agreement by harboring fighters.
“Holding Afghanistan responsible for incidents of insecurity in Pakistan is a failed attempt to divert attention from the truth,” the ministry’s statement said. It claimed that the suicide bomber involved in a recent attack on Chinese engineers in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province was actually a Pakistani national controlled by “terrorists and facilitators” inside Pakistan.
The statement added that the Afghan government has reassured Chinese authorities, who “have also understood the reality that Afghans are not involved in such matters.”
Gen. Sharif had directly linked freedom fighter’s actions in Pakistan, including the suicide attack on Chinese nationals in Dassu, to fighters based across the border in Afghanistan. He asserted that fighters were attempting to destabilize security in Pak-occupied-Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces.
In his remarks on Tuesday, the Military spokesperson said that “the roots of those carrying out operations in Pakistan lie in Afghanistan” and accused the Taliban of openly violating their commitments under the 2020 Doha agreement with the United States.
However, the Taliban spokesman Inayatullah Khwarzmi hit back, alleging that the killing of Chinese citizens in a high-security area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa “exposes the weakness of Pakistan’s security institutions or the collusion of the attackers from within the Army.”
The Taliban defense ministry statement went further, claiming that fighters from the Islamic State group were entering Afghanistan from Pakistan, and that Pakistani territory was “being used against us.”
This latest war of words underscores the tensions between the two neighbors since the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021. Pakistan, which had backed the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate in the 1990s, has repeatedly urged the current Taliban regime to take action against anti-Pakistan militants based on Afghan soil.
For their part, the Taliban authorities have denied giving refuge to any groups and have called on Pakistan to resolve internal militancy through domestic policies rather than blaming Kabul.