The Afghan Taliban government has accused Pakistan of creating chaos and military tension at the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
Attacking Pakistan, Taliban’s commander General Mubeen Khan blamed Islamabad for “deliberately” delaying its fruit export at the border. His statement comes a week after deadly violence between Taliban forces and the Pakistan Army that reportedly killed three Pakistani soldiers.
General Khan also said that Pakistan’s motive has always been to “harm Afghanistan”, no matter who is in power.
Amid rising tension at the border with the Pakistani Army, the Taliban official said that Afghanistan does not need the Gwadar or Karachi port owned by a Chinese-owned private firm for trade. He informed that Afghanistan has already signed a deal with Iran to use the Chabahar port.
Last year, in September, the Taliban had assured that the new Afghanistan government wants a good relationship with India, and that they were going to support its role in Chabahar port to boost its trade.
Expressing his desire to bolster ties with India, the militant leader also said that Afghanistan’s foreign minister should go to India and expose the Pakistan Army’s role in terror attacks in India.
Calling the Pakistani military force a “rentier army”, the Taliban official said that the Jaish-e-Mohammed chief and India’s most wanted terrorist Masood Azhar is an agent of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI.
He further claimed that that ISI trained al-Qaeda terrorist Saifullah Akhtar to fight in Kashmir. General Khan rejected Pakistan’s claims of Masood Azhar’s presence in Afghanistan, and said that Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is making a false statement to undermine relations between India and Pakistan.
“Does Bilawal know the geography? Are Islamabad, Punjab, and Karachi parts of Afghanistan?” questioned the Taliban official, rejecting Bilawal Bhutto’s claims.
Last week, the Taliban-led foreign ministry categorically rejected that terrorist Masood Azhar was in Afghanistan. The ministry further said that such terror organisations can only operate on Pakistan’s soil.
Earlier, Pakistan, in its letter to Afghanistan, had asked the Taliban to hand over Azhar who is allegedly probably present in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar or Kandahar province.
General Khan has also hit out at Pakistan’s cleric who recently urged the Taliban to change the star Afghan cricketer Muhammad Nabi’s name. “They should change (the) name of Quaid-e-Azam Jinnah who was a drunk Englishman. Only the Prophet is Quaid-e-Azam,” said the Taliban official in an interview.
“Their capital is Islamabad while there’s nothing Islamic there,” he commented.
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