Fencing underway to secure borders with Iran, Afghanistan: Rasheed

ISLAMABAD: Interior Minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmad has said that the government has taken concrete measures to make the borders with Iran and Afghanistan protected.

Talking to the media on Saturday, the interior minister said that 88 percent of the fencing process on Afghan border has been completed while 46 percent work has been done on the Pak-Iran border to prevent illegal entry into Pakistan.

Rasheed said the fencing along the borders would help to stop illegal movement and smuggling. The interior minister said that Pakistan is ready to deal with any type of challenge with support of the Pakistan Army, intelligence agencies and the people.

Rasheed said that Islamabad is expecting that the Afghan Taliban will not allow terrorist groups like Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) to carry out activities against Pakistan. “Prime Minister Imran Khan has categorically said that we [Pakistan] will not give any bases to the United States to use against Afghanistan,” he said.

“…But we also expect from [Afghan] Taliban that they will not allow TTP [Tehreek-e-Pakistan Taliban] and other elements to carry out any activity which causes harm to the lives and property of Pakistani people,” he said.

Prime Minister Imran Khan earlier this week had repeated his firm stance of not providing any bases to the US, saying that “Islamabad is ready to be a partner for peace in Afghanistan with Washington because both the countries wanted stability, development and denial of terrorists’ havens there”.

Writing in The Washington Post, the prime minister had expressed the apprehension that Pakistan has already paid a very high price of instability in Afghanistan and if the country agrees to host US bases, from which to bomb Afghanistan, and an Afghan civil war ensued, Pakistan would be targeted for revenge by terrorists again.