Daily Times

A new United Nations report on Afghanistan highlights the continued and ever-growing cross-border terrorist threat posed by proscribed Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which according to the report, continues to operate from the eastern Nangarhar province of neighbouring country.

The 12th report of the UN monitoring team on Afghanistan submitted to the UN Security Council also notes TTP’s “distinctive anti-Pakistan objectives”.

Diplomats here noted that the report reinforces similar concerns expressed by an earlier report by the UN Monitoring Team, on various terrorist groups. In that report also, the Monitoring Team had referred to the strengthening of the TTP in Afghanistan as a result of “return of splinter groups to the TTP fold.”

The latest UN report estimates TTP’s strength to be between 2,500 and 6,000 armed fighters, after splinter groups, including “Shehryar Mehsud group, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA), Hizb-ul-Ahrar, the Amjad Farooqi group and the Usman Saifullah group (formerly known as Lashkar-e Jhangvi)” joined it, which, Pakistan has asserted, was engineered by Indian agencies.

The observations of the Monitoring Team’s report yet again vindicate Pakistan’s repeated concerns regarding the threat posed by the TTP to Pakistan’s security as well as the increase in the number of cross-border terrorist attacks being carried out by the terrorist outfit against Pakistan from the Afghan soil.

The UN earlier this year, had noted that Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) was responsible for over “100 cross-border attacks between July and October 2020”.

It would be recalled that last year, Pakistan handed over a dossier to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on the Indian sponsorship of terrorist groups TTP and JuA, both of which have been proscribed and sanctioned by the 1267 Sanctions Committee of the Security Council. Any direct or indirect support to TTP and JuA constitutes a grave violation of the UN Security Council counter-terrorism regime.

The latest report, according to the diplomats, is likely to further reinforce Pakistan’s demand that the international community needs to do more to prevent terrorist threats against Pakistan from externally financed and supported terrorist outfits operating from the soil of certain neighbouring countries.