ISLAMABAD: Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers said they had discussed bilateral security cooperation with Islamabad, including measures needed at border crossings between the two countries to stem the movement of terrorists into Pakistan, Voice of America reported.
Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid told reporters in Kabul that a delegation from Islamabad visited Kabul over the weekend for the discussions. Pakistan’s team was led by Lt Gen Faiz Hameed, head of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
Mujahid said the visitors conveyed their concerns over multiple jailbreaks during the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan and the release of hundreds of prisoners — including members of the proscribed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, a militant group based in Afghanistan and involved in terrorist attacks inside Pakistan.
He said the Taliban had assured the delegation that no one will be allowed to use Afghan soil against Pakistan.
“It was also discussed that there shall be a check or scrutiny system at the (border) gates to detect individuals who want to harm Pakistan, as per their information, and we don’t know about them because we are dealing with this new situation where doors of prisons had already been opened,” he said.
Mujahid said his side had stressed the need for not using this issue to close border gates to Afghanistan travellers, including patients, refugee families and daily wage workers who move across the border in search of work.
Official sources in Islamabad told VOA the spy chief went to Kabul to discuss with Taliban representatives matters related to border management and “overall security issue(s) to ensure that spoilers and terrorist organizations do not take advantage of the situation.”
The Taliban retook control of Afghanistan last month, nearly 20 years after U.S.-led international forces removed the Islamist movement from power for harbouring al Qaeda planners of the terror strikes on the United States on September 11, 2001.
Pakistan has long complained that leaders of TTP, an alliance of militant organisations, use sanctuaries in volatile Afghanistan to organise cross-border terrorist attacks.
Islamabad has had strained diplomatic ties with the former Afghanistan government that collapsed in the face of stunning Taliban victories, enabling the group to seize control of Kabul on August 15.
When the Taliban marched into the Afghan capital last month, inmates from a prison facility at the Bagram Airfield, 50 kilometres north of Kabul, managed to flee with the help of supporters taking advantage of the chaos. The prisoners included TTP operatives, a development that alarmed Pakistan.
The U.S. controlled the Bagram Airfield until July. The American military vacated the facility as part of its withdrawal from the country that was concluded on August 31.
The arrival of the Taliban might have generated hopes the group would help rein in TTP cross-border violent activities from their local hideouts, say analysts. But they say those expectations could be misplaced, citing the ideological closeness between the Afghan and the Pakistan Taliban.
“For Pakistan, getting the Taliban to curb the TTP amounts to an ambitious task. The TTP has long been allied with the Taliban, and it has partnered operationally with the Taliban,” said Michael Kugelman, deputy Asia director at Washington’s Wilson Center.
“The Taliban isn’t known for denying space to its militant allies, and I don’t see the TTP being an exception to the rule.”
