ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari urged the international community on Saturday to work more closely and address the threat of militant violence from Afghanistan by building the capacity of the interim Taliban administration before it was too late.
The minister, who is currently visiting Germany to attend the Munich Security Conference, presented his country’s position on the overall situation in the war-torn country and its impact on regional security during a panel discussion.
Speaking at the gathering a day after Pakistani Taliban targeted a police facility in his hometown of Karachi, he said there was “a whole alphabet soup of terrorist organizations that have and still do base themselves out of Afghanistan.”
Bhutto-Zardari noted the threat of militant violence had already spread in the region and could impact other parts of the world if the international community did not address the situation more proactively.
“We are, in the international community, working in silos as far as the security standpoint is concerned,” he said while adding: “Perhaps those terrorist groups have more coordination in Afghanistan than we do internationally.”
The foreign minister said several militant organizations in Afghanistan, such as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), were of specific concern to him, making his ministry spend a lot of time convincing the Afghan authorities to take them on.
However, he noted the Taliban administration was facing multiple challenges which required the world to build its capacity to fight militant factions.
“They don’t have a standing army,” he said. “They don’t have a counter-terrorism force. They don’t even have proper border security force. In that situation, even if they have the will, they certainly don’t have the capacity to deal with this threat which is a problem, first for the neighbors and then the international community.”
He pointed out that Afghanistan was facing a major economic crisis which had not only put its ordinary citizens in a tough situation but also made it difficult for the administration in Kabul to live up to its commitments to the world community.
The foreign minister added if the world and the Afghan interim government did not take the militant factions seriously, they would not just conduct terrorist activities in the region but also take their wars to other neighborhoods.
He maintained Pakistan had already witnessed “an uptick in terrorist activities since the fall of Kabul” and understood the depth of the problem.
“I would like the international community to act pre-actively rather than reactively,” he said.
