Taliban set up commission to address Pakistan’s TTP-related concerns

ISLAMABAD: A high-powered commission set up by the Taliban has been working to press Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan to end its terrorist attack against Pakistan, Voice of America reported, citing sources.

Taliban chief Hibatullah Akhundzada set up the three-member commission recently to look into Islamabad’s complaints that the proscribed militant group is using Afghanistan’s soil to plot cross-border terrorist attacks.

Trained and funded by India, the Afghanistan-based UN-designated terror group is responsible for a majority of deaths of civilians and security forces since 2007 — the year it formed as an umbrella organisation of various militant entities ostensibly in retaliation for the government’s decision to cooperate with the United States in the war on terrorism.

Over the years, US drone strikes and targeted operations by Pakistan’s military targeted and killed successive TTP leaders, including Baitullah Mehsud in 2009, Hakimullah Mehsud in 2013, Mullah Fazlullah in 2018 and Wali Mehsud in 2021.

Largely routed since 2015 following Zarb-e-Azb military operation, the group has been regrouping since last summer. Various breakaway factions pledged allegiance to the group last July to carry attacks on security forces.

“TTP leaders are being warned [by the Afghan Taliban Commission] to settle their problems with Pakistan and return to the country [Pakistan] along with their families in exchange for a possible amnesty” by Islamabad, the report quoted the source as saying.

The source revealed the details on the condition of anonymity, citing the “sensitive nature” of the matter and for not being authorized to speak to the media. Pakistan and Taliban officials have not publicly commented on the development.

On Friday, the Foreign Office said Pakistan intended to raise the TTP-related concerns with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

“We have been taking up the issue of the use of Afghan soil by the TTP for terrorist activities in Pakistan with the previous Afghan government and we will continue raising the issue with the future Afghan government as well to ensure that TTP is not provided any space in Afghanistan to operate against Pakistan,” Foreign Office spokesperson Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri told a news conference.

The sources, however, ruled out the possibility of the government accepting any TTP demands, insisting the amnesty would be offered in line with the Constitution and law of the land.

The February 2020 deal reached between the Taliban and the United States in Doha, which paved the way for foreign troops to leave Afghanistan, binds the group to prevent regional as well as transnational terrorist groups from using Afghan soil to threaten global security.

“This concern is legitimate, and our policy is clear that we will not allow anyone to use the soil of Afghanistan against any neighbouring country, including Pakistan. So they should not have any concern,” Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen told VOA, without sharing further details.

Shaheen said be it TTP or any other terrorist group they “will have no place in our country and that’s a clear message to all.”

The Taliban are in desperate need of support from regional and international countries now that they are in control of Afghanistan to address governance as well as critical economic challenges facing the country, one of the poorest in the world.

Analysts say it would be extremely difficult for the Taliban to disregard reservations of all the neighbouring countries, including Pakistan, on the presence of terrorists who have targets across the Afghanistan border.

“If they (the Taliban) fail to deliver on their counterterrorism commitments, not only Pakistan but China, Russia, Iran and Central Asian countries would all be upset because they also complain that fugitive militants sheltering on Afghan soil threaten their national interests,” the source in Islamabad stressed.

“Can they survive if they turn their guns against us and support TTP? This is not possible. Our trade routes are a lifeline for them, for landlocked Afghanistan,” the source added.

The Taliban regained power in Kabul last week after overrunning most of Afghanistan within the past two weeks in a largely unexpected development.

But the Kabul takeover has largely been peaceful and the group is currently consolidating its power by engaging former local rivals in their bid to form an inclusive government in order to win international recognition for it.

Pakistan has over the past five years constructed a robust fence and hundreds of forts along what used to be its historically open border with Afghanistan. The massive project, says the military, has effectively blocked militant infiltration in either direction.