Roving Periscope: Taliban threatens to ‘divorce’ Pakistan
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: With Islamabad’s utter failure to trump up adequate support from the 57-nation Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) last week, the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan may have begun ‘divorce proceedings’ against Pakistan.
Soon after the OIC meeting concluded on December 19 with no tangible results—and realizing that Pakistan actually promoted its own Kashmir agenda!—the Taliban shelled the Pakistan Army’s outposts along the Durand Line, resisting its attempts to speedily fence off the 2,670-km-long international border between the two countries. The Taliban members even took away barbed wires from many areas, despite protests by the Pakistani soldiers.
Islamabad took this drastic step of fencing off Afghan border areas to keep at bay the dreaded Tahreek-e-Taliban-Pakistan (TTP) terrorists, based out of Afghanistan, who have threatened to erase the Durand Line and incorporate Pakistan into a “Greater Afghanistan”, ruled by the Taliban.
On Sunday, the Taliban dissolved Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission, and Electoral Complaints Commission, as well as state ministries for peace and parliamentary affairs, according to the local Afghan media outlet Tolo News. Quoting Bilal Karimi, Deputy spokesperson for Afghanistan’s Taliban-run government, it said the two commissions were “unnecessary institutions for the current situation in Afghanistan.”
Pakistan and Afghanistan have for long disagreed over the sanctity of the Durand Line and clashed multiple times in the past. Even the Taliban regime has continued with this policy and advocated a “Greater Afghanistan” extending far beyond the Line into Pakistani territory.
On Saturday last week, the Taliban warned Pakistan of response after the Islamabad military launched shell mortars on Afghanistan in the Chogam area of Shilton district in Kunar. Some reports said they killed two Pakistani soldiers in an exchange of fire across the two sides of Durand Line last week.
At least one Afghan civilian was injured and the Pakistani Army attack inflicted large-scale financial damage on the Afghan side, the reports said.
Strongly reacting to it, in a dire warning to the Imran Khan government, a top military commander of the Taliban stressed the Afghans were ready to give the same response if attacks by the Pakistani military continued. He then warned Islamabad to not fire artillery on Kabul, citing the consequences.
“The Taliban seeks good ties with its neighbors and its forces have the military equipment to defend the country”, said Abu Dujana, Commander of 201 Khalid Bin Walid Corps, on Saturday.
“This is precious soil. We have paid an enormous sacrifice for it. We want to be good neighbors, but if they keep attacking our soil, we will certainly give them a response,” Tolo News reported.
Dujana said that mortar shelling by the Pakistani side has injured civilians in Afghanistan’s Chogam area of Shilton district in Kunar.
According to reports, Pakistan has been targeting several parts of the western province of Kunar for the past two weeks. Witnesses cited the Pakistani drones also operating over the province.
