Pakistan says ceasefire hinges on Afghanistan curbing armed groups

Khawaja Muhammad Asif, the country’s defense minister, has stated that the country’s fragile ceasefire with Afghanistan depends on whether those two countries stop fighting armed groups along their shared border.

After Qatar and Turkiye brokered a ceasefire agreement the day before, Asif said in an interview with Reuters that “everything depends on this one clause.”

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Relations between Afghanistan’s Taliban and the United States fell to their lowest point since the country’s Taliban’s withdrawal from the country in 2021 following a week of deadly border fighting.

Islamabad demanded that Kabul be able to control Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a branch of several armed organizations known as the Pakistan Taliban, because they claimed they operated from havens in Afghanistan.

Asif, who spoke with his Afghan counterpart Mullah Muhammad Yaqoob, declared that “anything coming from Afghanistan will be]a] a] violation of this agreement. According to him, the written agreement forbade any incursions.

The minister claimed that the Taliban, which the latter has denied, had acted “in connivance” with the country’s ruling Taliban. Afghanistan accuses the Pakistani military of deceiving ISIL (ISIS)-linked fighters and spreading false information to denigrate its stability and sovereignty.

According to Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s spokesperson, “neither country will engage in hostile behavior against the other, nor will they support organizations that attack the government of Pakistan,” according to the agreement’s terms.

According to Mujahid, the nations have agreed to “never to target one another’s security forces, civilians, or critical infrastructure.”

In recent months, the Pakistan Taliban has increased attacks on Pakistan’s military, which has been waged against Islamabad for years.

Noor Wali Mehsud, the leader of Pakistan’s Taliban, was later identified in a video that showed he was alive when the military conducted air strikes on the Afghan capital Kabul, including one on October 9 in an attempt to kill him.

“We were attacked,” he said. Our country was under attack. We simply tittered for tat, then. We were making the same amount of money, Asif said.

They are located in Kabul, they claim. They can be found everywhere. We will attack them wherever they are. You are aware that Kashmir is not a “no-go area.”