The Taliban’s chief spokesman said on Monday that they have “firmly” told Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and other groups that they would not be allowed to use Afghanistan’s territory to launch attacks against other countries.
“We do not allow anyone to use Afghanistan’s soil against others. We have told this to TTP and other sides who would have such an attempt. We have told the Pakistani side too that we will not allow anyone to use our soil,” Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, said in an audio message broadcast by the Taliban-run national broadcaster, RTA.
Mujahid questioned Pakistan’s claims that TTP fighters were crossing from Afghanistan into Pakistan, pointing to the tightly controlled border.
“When not even a crate of tomatoes can cross to the other side and a patient cannot go across the border for treatment, how can TTP cross into Pakistan?” he said. “Where are they crossing from? Where is the Pakistani side and where are its border and intelligence forces?”
He insisted that TTP was an internal problem for Pakistan and that the group’s presence and operations were rooted inside Pakistan itself.
“Afghanistan does not want to allow anyone beyond its borders to carry out attacks,” he said.
Pakistani officials have repeatedly accused the Taliban of harboring and supporting TTP, saying the group plans and coordinates attacks from safe havens inside Afghanistan — allegations the Taliban deny.
Amid the escalating accusations, Pakistan has carried out several airstrikes inside Afghanistan in recent months, claiming to target TTP fighters.
In the latest incident, Pakistani fighter jets struck areas in the districts of Khogyani, Ghani Khil and Behsud in Nangarhar Province, as well as Barmal district in Paktika Province, around midnight on Feb. 21.
Pakistan says the strikes targeted hideouts of TTP and the Daesh’s Khorasan branch, claiming that nearly 70 militants were killed. Taliban have rejected that account, describing the strikes as an attack on civilians and claiming that more than 20 noncombatants, including women and children, were killed in Behsud district alone.
Pakistan’s Ministry of Information has described the operation as retaliatory, carried out in response to recent suicide and car bomb attacks inside Pakistan, including assaults in Islamabad, Bajaur and Bannu during Ramadan.
