KABUL: Afghanistan’s Taliban administration has rejected allegations made by Pakistani officials on the string of attacks in the neighboring country, and said Islamabad is responsible for finding a solution on its own.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said last week that militants behind the spate of suicide attacks in the country – including a blast that killed at least 63 people in northwestern Pakistan in July – were being helped by “Afghan citizens” across the border.
“After the recent security incident in Pakistan, officials have once again blamed Afghans instead of strengthening the security of their country,” Zabihullah Mujahid, chief spokesman for Afghanistan’s Taliban administration, said in a statement issued on Tuesday night.
“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan strongly rejects these allegations and insists that Afghanistan is a country that has come out of a long-lasting war and it does not want to threaten the security of any country, specially neighboring countries.”
Pakistani officials have blamed the uptick in militant attacks on the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, which Islamabad says was emboldened by the Afghan Taliban takeover in 2021.
Though the TTP openly pledged allegiance to the Afghan Taliban after the fall of Kabul in 2021, they were not accepted by the latter and remained a separate militant group.
“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan once again emphasize that it is not in favor of any attack on Pakistan and we will not allow anyone to use the soil of Afghanistan against Pakistan,” Mujahid said.
“However, it is not our responsibility to prevent and control attacks inside the territory of Pakistan.”
Afghan officials have responded to similar allegations in the past in the same way, including when Foreign Minister Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi met with Pakistan’s special envoy for Afghanistan Asif Durrani in Kabul last month.
Afghanistan and Pakistan should find a “common solution” when attacks occur, Mujahid said, as he highlighted that “blaming is not the solution.”
“In the past two years, since the establishment of Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan, the security situation of the country and the region has improved significantly,” Mujahid said. “The security incidents have increased only in Pakistan; it is the responsibility of the country to find a solution on its own.”
Mohammad Sadiq Shinwari, a security analyst based in Kabul, told Arab News on Wednesday that Pakistan’s allegations could “damage the strategic and diplomatic relations of both countries.”
“If Pakistan wants to solve the existing problems, it should share its intelligence issues … with the intelligence officials of the Afghan government so that the existing problems can be solved,” Shinwari said.
