Pakistan will target terror hideouts inside Afg: Khawaja Asif

Pakistan’s defense minister, Khawaja Asif, has warned the Afghan Taliban that Islamabad will strike terrorist hideouts inside Afghanistan if the Taliban in Kabul are unable to rein in anti-Pakistan militants.

In an exclusive interview with Voice of America, Asif said in his late-February visit to Afghanistan that he reminded Taliban leaders to live up to their cross-border security commitments forbidding terrorists from using Afghan soil to plan and conduct attacks on Pakistan or Islamabad will take action.“

If that is not done, at some point we’ll have to … resort to some measures, which will definitely — wherever [terrorists] are, their sanctuaries on Afghan soil — we’ll have to hit them,

” he said. “We’ll have to hit them because we cannot tolerate this situation for long.”

Asif said he hopes the security threat to his country will not escalate to a point where “we have to do something which will be not to the liking of our neighbors and our brothers in Kabul,” whom he said Pakistan “wished well” in their efforts to establish their writ across Afghanistan.

Mr. Asif also criticized former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan and the previous military and intelligence leadership for allowing thousands of Taliban fighters and their families to return to Pakistan in a bid to continue negotiations with the militants.

Intelligence reports say that allowed the terrorists to regroup.

It is mentionable that after Taliban’s domination in Afghanistan, the number of terror attacks have increased in Pakistan.

According to the Islamabad-based Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, the country recorded at least 262 terror attacks in 2022, of which the TTP was responsible for at least 89. Last November, the group ended a unilateral cease-fire after talks with Islamabad broke down.