Press. voanews.com
A top
Pakistan Foreign Ministry official has said that “some” members of the
terrorist Haqqani network are present in the country, but Islamabad is not
allowing any group to conduct terrorist activities in Afghanistan. Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry has made the
rare admission in an interview to the state-run Pakistani television PTV
broadcast Sunday.
The
United States has designated the Haqqani network and its leadership as global
terrorists for carrying out high-profile deadly attacks against American and
allied forces in Afghanistan.
Afghan
President Ashraf Ghani and U.S. officials allege Haqqanis operate out of
sanctuaries in Pakistan, a charge Islamabad rejects. “The Haqqani Network is
actually part of the Taliban. Most of their people are in Afghanistan, most of
them, and some of them are present here (in Pakistan),” said Chaudhry.
Chaudhry
asserted the Pakistani leadership is sticking to its pledges of not allowing
any individual or group to use Pakistan’s soil for terrorist activities. “We
have also explicitly given the same message to the Taliban and Haqqanis that
you must not indulge in any terrorist activity or violence in Afghanistan,” he
said. “And if you can’t mend your ways and live peacefully like millions of
Afghan refugees in Pakistan, then you better leave the country because
Pakistani soil cannot welcome you and the space would be squeezed on you.”
Consequently,
most of the insurgents went back to Afghanistan where 10 percent of the
territory is now controlled by the Taliban, Chaudhry said citing U.S. military
estimates. The U.S. Congress last week passed the 2017 National Defense
Authorization Act, which includes $900 million for reimbursement to Pakistan
for conducting counterterrorism operations to secure its long border with
Afghanistan.
But the
legislation is linked to the release of $400 million of the allocated amount to
Pakistan’s “demonstrable” steps against the Haqqani Network. Foreign Secretary
Chaudhry said Pakistan is putting “incremental pressure” on Taliban and
Haqqanis to persuade them to reengage in peace talks with Afghan authorities. But
Islamabad has made it clear to the Afghan leadership that it would not use
military force against the insurgents because they would then turn their guns
on Pakistanis, bringing Afghanistan’s war to Pakistan, he said, and
reemphasized the need for finding a political solution to the Afghan conflict.
The
Pakistani official reiterated Islamabad is ready to facilitate peace talks
between Afghan warring sides provided Kabul accepts the offer. Speaking earlier
this month in Washington, U.S. commander of international forces in Afghanistan
General John Nicholson warned the Haqqanis still pose the greatest threat to
Americans and to their coalition partners and to the Afghans.
“And they
remain a principal concern of ours. And they, and they do enjoy sanctuary inside
Pakistan,” the general added. Chaudhry urged President Ghani to prevent
anti-Pakistan militants from “roaming freely” on his side of the border and
carry out attacks in Pakistan on “mere assumptions” that Islamabad harbors
anti-Kabul militants.
If the Afghan
side believes mere allegations against Pakistan would help solve Afghanistan’s
problems “then let them believe so. It would not get them anywhere,” he added. Afghan
officials deny they have anything to do with the militants linked to anti-state
Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, though Pakistani officials point to
killings of a number of leaders of the group in Afghanistan this year by U.S.
drone attacks.
Islamabad
hosted a preliminary round of peace talks between Kabul and Taliban officials
in July 2015, the first direct contact between Afghan warring sides in 15
years. Chaudhry along with U.S. and Chinese officials attended the negotiations
as monitors. But since then the war has intensified, fueling tensions between
Afghanistan and Pakistan over Islamabad’s alleged backing of the insurgency.