Daily Times

Civil and military leadership of Pakistan has taken strong exceptions to the “baseless accusations” made by the Afghan President in Kabul Process meeting inaugurated by him on Tuesday.

While opening the 23-nation moot, Mr. Ghani had said Afghanistan was suffering an “undeclared war of aggression from Pakistan”. This statement came a day after the Afghan Ministry of Interior claimed that the explosives used in last week’s deadly truck bombing near Kabul’s Zanbaq Square were from Pakistan, which was later claimed by DAESH Khurasan through their website. While talking to media, the Ministry’s spokesperson Najib Danish had said, “Pakistan is the key planner of this incident like in the past, but our security team is investigating the incident and these investigations have not been completed”. He further said that Pakistan’s spy agency had supplied the Haqqani network with explosives to conduct the bombing in Kabul killing over 100 people. In his speech on Tuesday, Mr. Ghani pointed out that in the past two years, 11,000 foreign fighters had arrived Afghanistan to fight for DAESH. It is still not clear if Afghan intelligence apparatus is investigating the DAESH involvement because all the Afghan guns are so far blazing on Pakistan.

There was a strong reaction in Pakistan on what most of the strategic elite in Islamabad termed as ‘threatening language’ by the Afghan President. Chief of Army Staff Gen Qamar Bajwa immediately convened a special meeting of Corps Commanders Conference on Wednesday in which the Afghan accusations were rejected and strong objection was raised on “the unwarranted accusations and threats against Pakistan”.

Talking to Daily Times, General Asif Ghafoor, Director General ISPR said that Pakistan considers Afghanistan a brotherly country having a shared culture and religion. “We have never considered Afghanistan as an enemy but we get disappointed when the hostile regional actors work from the soil of Afghanistan”, he added. When asked about the alleged Afghan Taliban and Haqqani network sanctuaries in Pakistan, he unequivocally rejected the allegation asserting that Pakistan has cleaned up its territory from all kinds of terrorist sanctuaries and there was no discrimination of good and bad terrorists. He also rejected the recent media reports on the fund raising in different areas of KP and FATA for ‘Afghan Jihad’. “I invite anyone from the Afghan or Pakistani media to come visit the areas we have cleared to see if these things are happening there”, he added. The DG ISPR expressed his concern against the “baseless allegations” and reminded Afghanistan of its own weaknesses in countering terrorism on its soil.

He said that Afghanistan needed to look inwards and see how the explosive could travel all the way from Pak-Afghan border to Kabul without getting detected anywhere on the way? It may also be mentioned that COAS has recently taken several steps to check cross border movement of terrorists, including the fencing along Pak-Afghan border in FATA and KP, establishing border posts and forts and raising new FC wings and biometric on gates.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister convened a special meeting of National Security Council to deliberate on the issues of national and regional security, in which most of the time was given to these fresh allegations from Afghanistan. While strongly condemning the recent terrorist attack on Kabul, the Council resolved to remain steadfast and resolute in support of Afghan people, but expressed concern on the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan and strongly rejected the Afghan allegations on Pakistan in that context. The Council reiterated that Pakistan was the only country in the Afghan equation, which has achieved clear and measurable success against terrorism despite limited capacity and huge human and economic costs. The Council also reminded that Pakistan had shown “exceptional restraint even when Afghan territory was used for terrorist acts in Pakistan, which resulted in massive human losses”.

While talking to Daily Times, Afrasiyab Khattak, the senior leader of ANP said that Pakistan must not react bitterly to Mr. Ghani’s few sentences, which need to be seen in a context. “The statement of Mr. Sartaj Aziz is on record in which he claimed the presence of Afghan Taliban on our soil, which makes Afghan concerns worthy of given a serious thought”, he said. He recalled the deadly attack on Sehwan Sharif couple of months ago after which, “Pakistan had said the attackers travelled from Afghanistan”. He stressed for the need to engaging Afghanistan instead of escalating the tensions, and going back to the strategic agreement signed in 2014.

Senior leader of PTI, Naeem ul Haq while speaking in his personal capacity told Daily Times that the Afghan President was playing into the hands of India’s R&AW whose agents number in hundreds in Afghanistan. Afghanistan’s “myopic policies are designed to secure Mr. Ghani’s power only who depends on the security provided by 12,000 foreign troops on Afghan soil”, he said. He recalled the Murree process wherein the Americans and the Chinese were present as observers, “Mr. Ghani had assured the failure of that process because India was not invited”.

While giving PTI’s official position however, the party spokesperson Fawad Chaudhry said stable Afghanistan is in Pakistan’s interest and Pakistan must extend cooperation by all possible means to achieve this goal, however Afghan Government must stop blaming every failure on Pakistan. “As per independent media reports Afghan Govt has ceded 43% Afghan area to Taliban, Pakistan’s territory is hardly needed to plan anything in Afghanistan”, he added. He said that the terrorists were enemy of both, Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as the rest of the world, so it was important that instead of blaming each other we fight this menace with full force jointly.