Act Daily News
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When the United States withdrew its forces from Afghanistan after 20 years within the nation, it did so on a promise that the Taliban as soon as again in authorities would supply no haven for terrorist teams.
The Taliban pledge coated not solely al Qaeda – the phobia group whose presence within the nation led to the US invasion in 2001 – but additionally the Taliban’s ideological twin subsequent door, the Pakistani Taliban or TTP (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan).
But the latest break down of an already shaky year-long ceasefire in neighboring Pakistan between the TTP and Islamabad raises some troubling questions over whether or not that promise will maintain.
The finish of the ceasefire in Pakistan threatens not solely escalating violence in that nation however probably a rise in cross-border tensions between the Afghan and Pakistani governments.
And it’s already placing hyperlinks between the Afghan Taliban and its Pakistani counterpart beneath the highlight.
As just lately as spring final yr Pakistani Taliban chief Noor Wali Mehsud instructed Act Daily News that in return for serving to to push the US out of Kabul his group would anticipate assist from the Afghan Taliban in its personal battle.
Like their erstwhile brothers in arms in Afghanistan, the Pakistani Taliban need to overthrow their nation’s authorities and impose their very own strict Islamic code.
In an unique interview with Act Daily News this week, Mehsud blamed the ceasefire’s breakdown on Islamabad, saying it “violated the ceasefire and martyred tens of our comrades and arrested tens of them.”
But he was extra guarded when requested instantly whether or not the Afghan Taliban was now serving to his group as he had as soon as hoped.
His reply: “We are fighting Pakistan’s war from within the territory of Pakistan; using Pakistani soil. We have the ability to fight for many more decades with the weapons and spirit of liberation that exist in the soil of Pakistan.”
Those phrases ought to be of concern not solely to Islamabad, however Washington too.
The FBI has been monitoring the TTP for a minimum of a decade and a half, lengthy earlier than they radicalized and skilled Faisal Shazad for his brazen assault setting hearth to a automobile in New York’s Times Square in 2010.
Following the Times Square assault the TTP was designated a terrorist group and continues to be thought of a menace to US pursuits.
And whereas Islamabad is eager to minimize the menace from the group – Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah says Pakistan can “fully” management battle with the TTP and describes conversations with the TTP through the ceasefire as talks “which are held in a state of war” – its management of the scenario pivots on the TTP remaining inside Pakistan’s borders.
There are rising questions concerning the TTP’s attain and Islamabad’s notion of the scenario doesn’t match Mehsud’s.
In April this yr, the Pakistani navy struck targets in Afghanistan warning that “terrorists are using Afghan soil with impunity to carry out activities inside Pakistan.”
And in late November, the day after the ceasefire broke down, Islamabad once more claimed the TTP have been utilizing Afghan territory as a protected haven, sending Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar to specific its considerations to Kabul.
The very subsequent day the TTP claimed accountability for an assault within the border province of Quetta, the place a suicide bomber had focused a police van serving to a Polio vaccination group, killing three and injuring 23.
When Act Daily News pressed Meshud on Islamabad’s claims that he’s getting Afghan assist, asking him if the assist is being saved secret, he rejected this, saying: “When we don’t need any help from the Afghan Taliban; what is the point of hiding it?”
Nevertheless, cross border Afghan/Pakistani authorities tensions are constructing and got here to a lethal head once more final week in an change between the 2 nations’ militaries close to the Chaman/Spin Boldak border put up, an important industrial hyperlink between the 2 nations.
Six individuals have been killed and 17 injured. While there isn’t any proof of direct involvement by the TTP – or a minimum of, not but – the top of the ceasefire has clearly raised the temperature.
The scenario is simply getting extra flamable, with the TTP this week asserting one other three jihadi teams had joined their ranks, all from alongside the troubled Afghanistan-Pakistan border area.
The United States has additionally accused the Pakistani Taliban of utilizing Afghan territory, doing so in an announcement three days after the ceasefire ended during which the State Department named TTP defence chief Qari Amjad as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist.”
That raises the chance that the US might goal TTP commanders discovered working in Afghanistan – a lot because it killed al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri with a drone strike in Kabul in September.
“The United States is committed to using its full set of counterterrorism tools to counter the threat posed by terrorist groups operating in Afghanistan, including al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent and Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), as part of our relentless efforts to ensure that terrorists do not use Afghanistan as a platform for international terrorism,” the State Department stated in its assertion.
Intriguingly, the Pakistani Taliban is the one terrorist group within the area to have acknowledged al-Zawahiri’s killing.
Yet in his interview with Act Daily News, Mehsud was defiant saying he “did not expect America to take such action” towards his group.
“America should stop teasing us by interfering in our affairs unnecessarily at the instigation of Pakistan – this cruel decision shows the failure of American politics,” he stated.
But he additionally shot again with a menace, that “if America takes such a step, America itself will be responsible for its loss. The United States has not yet understood Pakistan’s duplicitous policy; Pakistan’s history is a witness that it keeps changing directions for its own interests.”
Washington, for its half, faces a quandary. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto is at present visiting the US and the TTP was seemingly on the agenda when he met United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres for a Security Council debate on the “maintenance of international peace and security” on December 14. It can even seemingly characteristic in his talks with US administration officers in Washington, DC, that are scheduled for December 19.
But because the United States has already found at its value, there aren’t any simple options in Afghanistan.
More than a yr since its withdrawal and the humanitarian scenario within the nation continues to worsen, and regardless of the US just lately easing controls that restrict the Afghan Taliban’s entry to worldwide funds, the previous terror-group-turned-government continues to fail even reasonable worldwide expectations of excellent governance.
The UN Human rights chief just lately accused the Afghan Taliban of “the continued systemic exclusion of women and girls from virtually all aspects of life”, and up to now week they held their first public execution since coming to energy.
Yet if the Afghan Taliban are proven to be serving to the TTP, there may be one other troubling prospect for the US: it could face better strain to re-engage.