ISLAMABAD: A top Pakistani official on Thursday held a meeting with Afghanistan’s interim deputy interior minister, Muhammad Nabi Omari, in Kabul and shared with him findings of a March 26 suicide attack in northwest Pakistan that killed five Chinese nationals and their Pakistani driver, the Pakistani foreign office said.
China is a major ally and investor in Pakistan but both separatist and other militants have attacked Chinese projects and personnel in recent years. The five Chinese workers were killed when a suicide bomber rammed his car into their vehicle while they were on their way to the Dasu hydropower project in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province.
Islamabad blamed the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) for the attack in KP’s Besham city and Pakistan’s interior minister and counter-terrorism chief last week said the bombing was coordinated by TTP members from Afghanistan, demanding Kabul to arrest and hand over the suspects involved in the deadly attack to Pakistan.
On Thursday, Pakistan’s interior secretary, Muhammad Khurram Agha, traveled to Kabul on the special directives of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and held a detailed meeting with the Afghan interior deputy interior minister, according to the Pakistani foreign office.
“The Secretary Interior shared the findings of the Government of Pakistan into the Besham attack and sought Afghanistan’s assistance in apprehending the perpetrators,” the foreign office said in a statement. “The Afghan side also agreed to examine the findings of the investigation and expressed the resolve to work with the Pakistan side to take the investigation to its logical conclusion.”
The Dasu hydropower project falls under the ambit of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a flagship project of China’s Belt and Road Initiative through which it has pledged more than $65 billion for road, rail and other infrastructure developments in the South Asian nation of 241 million people. The March 26 assault was the third major one in a little over a week on the Chinese interests in Pakistan.
It followed a Mar. 20 attack on a strategic port used by China in the southwestern province of Balochistan, where Beijing has poured billions of dollars into infrastructure projects, and a Mar. 25 assault on a naval air base, also in the southwest. Both attacks were claimed by the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), the most prominent of several separatist groups in Balochistan.
The Pakistani foreign office said the Afghan side reiterated its commitment to prevent the use of their soil for any militant activity against other countries, including Pakistan. “The two sides agreed to remain engaged to confront the threat posed by terrorism to regional countries and to address the concerns raised by Pakistan,” it added.
Pakistan has witnessed a surge in militant attacks in its western regions that border Afghanistan, particularly after the TTP called off its months-long, fragile truce with the Pakistani government in November 2022.
The TTP, or the Pakistani Taliban, are a separate group but a close ally of the Afghan Taliban, who seized power in Afghanistan in 2021. The Pakistani government says the Taliban takeover of the neighboring Afghanistan has emboldened the TTP, which has mounted attacks against Pakistani police and security forces in the last one-and-a-half year.
In 2023, Islamabad also ordered all illegal immigrants to leave Pakistan by Nov 1, triggering an exodus of foreigners, mostly Afghans, from the country.
Pakistan brushed off calls from the United Nations (UN), rights groups and Western embassies to reconsider the expulsion plan and said many of these Afghan nationals had been involved in militant attacks and in crimes that undermined the security of the country. Kabul denied the accusations and said Pakistan’s security was a domestic problem of Islamabad.