Pakistan lodged an official complaint Wednesday with the Taliban government in Afghanistan over a recent extremist attack against a military compound in the northwest, which resulted in the deaths of eight soldiers and injuries to many others.
The Foreign Ministry said that it summoned the deputy chief of the Afghan Embassy in Islamabad to deliver a "strong demarche" or official diplomatic note regarding Monday’s pre-dawn raid in the garrison city of Bannu.
The statement urged Taliban authorities to “fully investigate and take immediate, robust and effective action against the perpetrators” of the attack.
The Pakistani military has said that 10 heavily armed men carried out the Bannu assault and were all killed in the ensuing hours-long gun battles with security forces.
The Foreign Ministry asserted that the assailants were allies of the globally designed terrorist group Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, based in Afghanistan and orchestrating cross-border attacks.
The statement said the group “is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Pakistani civilians and security forces.” It urged de facto Afghan authorities to “fully investigate and take immediate, robust, and effective action against the perpetrators” of the deadly violence and “prevent the recurrence of such attacks” from Afghan soil.
“Pakistan reiterated its serious concerns over the presence of terror outfits inside Afghanistan that continue to threaten Pakistan’s security,” the foreign ministry stated Wednesday, reiterating Islamabad’s call for “decisive action against terrorism.”
Taliban officials in Kabul have not responded to the charges immediately, though they have previously denied such allegations and claimed no foreign groups are present in Afghan territory.
Pakistani security officials have claimed that their investigations into the Bannu attack identified one of the slain assailants as an Afghan national. They stated that he was a resident of the eastern Afghan province of Logar and an active Afghan Taliban combatant.
U.S. reaction
On Tuesday, the United States, while commenting on surging militant violence in Pakistan, renewed its call for Taliban authorities to combat extremist threats emanating from Afghanistan.
“We have a shared interest with the Pakistani people and the government of Pakistan in combating threats to regional security,” State Department spokesperson Mathew Miller told reporters in Washington.
“We do continue to urge the Taliban to ensure that terrorist attacks are not launched from Afghan soil. That has been a priority for us in engagements with them, and it continues to be,” Miller added.
The United Nations released a report on the security situation in Afghanistan earlier this month, describing the TTP as “the largest terrorist group” operating in the country.
“TTP continues to operate at a significant scale in Afghanistan and to conduct terrorist operations into Pakistan from there, often utilizing Afghans,” said the report by the U.N. sanctions monitoring team. It noted that the ruling Taliban and al-Qaida are increasingly supporting cross-border TTP attacks.
“The Taliban do not conceive of TTP as a terrorist group: the bonds are close, and the debt owed to TTP is significant,” the U.N. report added.
Taliban government spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid rejected the U.N. findings, saying they are part of efforts to malign their Islamic administration in Kabul.
The TTP, commonly referred to as the Pakistani Taliban, is known to have publicly pledged allegiance to the Afghan Taliban. It provided shelter on Pakistani soil and recruits for their Afghan ideological allies to help them wage insurgent attacks against the U.S.-led NATO troops for years until U.S. and international forces withdrew in 2021, and the Taliban reclaimed control of Afghanistan.
