Last Update: February 04, 2023, 23:53 IST
Members of the media gather near a damaged mosque following the January 30 suicide blast inside the police headquarters in Peshawar, February 2, 2023. (AFP)
Special Assistant to Pakistan Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, Faisal Karim Kundi, said delegations would be sent to Tehran and Kabul “to ask them to ensure that their soil is not used by terrorists against Pakistan”.
Islamabad will ask the secretive supreme leader of Afghanistan’s Taliban to rein in terrorists in Pakistan after a suicide bombing killed several police, officials said on Saturday.
Since the Taliban returned to power in Kabul, Pakistan has seen a dramatic increase in attacks in areas bordering Afghanistan, with militants using the rugged terrain to launch attacks and avoid detection.
Detectives have blamed an affiliate of the Pakistani Taliban for Monday’s blast in Peshawar – the most notorious terrorist organization in the region – that killed 84 people inside a fortified police headquarters.
The Pakistani Taliban shares similar lineage and ideals with the Afghan Taliban, led by Hibatullah Akhundzada, who issues orders from his base in the southern city of Kandahar.
Special Assistant to Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Faisal Karim Kundi, said delegations would be sent to Tehran and Kabul, “asking them to ensure that their soil is not used by terrorists against Pakistan”.
A senior Pakistani police officer in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where Monday’s explosion occurred, told AFP that the Kabul delegation would hold “talks with top officials”.
“When we say top leadership, it means … Afghan Taliban chief Hibatullah Akhundzada,” he said on condition of anonymity.
Afghan officials did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.
But on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaki warned that Pakistan “should not blame others”.
“He should see the problems at home,” he said. “Afghanistan should not be blamed.”
During the 20-year US-led intervention in Afghanistan, Islamabad was accused of providing covert support to the Afghan Taliban while the country proclaimed a military alliance with the United States.
But since the ultra-conservatives captured Kabul in 2021, relations with Pakistan have soured, partly due to the resurgence of the Pakistani Taliban, known as the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Also known.
The TTP – formed in 2007 by Pakistani militants who broke away from the Afghan Taliban – once dominated swaths of north-west Pakistan, but lost ground to an army offensive after 2014.
But in the first year of Taliban rule, Pakistan saw a 50 percent increase in militant attacks, which were concentrated in border areas. Afghanistan and Iran, according to the Pak Institute for Peace Studies.
A United Nations Security Council report in May 2022 stated that the TTP, infamous for the shooting of schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, “has arguably benefited most of all foreign extremist groups in Afghanistan from the Taliban takeover.”
Last year, Kabul mediated peace talks between Islamabad and the TTP, but the shaky ceasefire broke down.
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(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed)