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ISLAMABAD – Pakistan’s caretaker prime minister has said that militant teams are finishing up frequent and extra deadly assaults on his nation’s safety forces as a result of they’re utilizing the army tools left behind by the USA in Afghanistan.
The assertions by Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar got here as militant ambushes and raids towards Pakistani army and police forces grow to be every day occurrences, notably in districts close to or alongside the Afghan border.
The violence has killed lots of of safety forces – together with greater than 200 army officers and troopers – within the first eight months of 2023.
‘The explanation for the current resurgence of terrorism being witnessed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan is, sadly, an final result of the rushed army withdrawal by the U.S. and NATO allies,’ Kakar mentioned in feedback aired Friday on state tv.
The prime minister referred to the 2 Pakistani provinces lining the nation’s 2,600-kilometer border with Afghanistan. He spoke to native media representatives in Islamabad on a day when a suicide bomber struck a army convoy within the Bannu district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, killing 9 troopers and wounding a number of others.
‘The rushed withdrawal has had an impression not simply on Pakistan but in addition on Central Asia, China, Iran, and the entire area,’ Kakar mentioned.
‘They’ll now goal my soldier’
Kakar said that Pakistani leaders had lengthy unsuccessfully persuaded the U.S. to stage a ‘accountable withdrawal’ to make sure their struggle tools was accounted for and past the attain of terrorist teams.
Kakar claimed that anti-state teams such because the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, and ethnic Baluch insurgents committing terrorist acts in his nation have now armed themselves with thermal weapons, assault rifles, evening imaginative and prescient goggles, and different tools that U.S. troops left.
‘This tools has vastly enhanced the combating capability of terrorists and non-state actors within the area,’ Kakar mentioned. ‘Beforehand, they’d minimal capability, however they will now goal my soldier even when he strikes his finger.’
Washington and allied nations chaotically pulled out all their troops from Afghanistan in August 2021 after nearly twenty years of counterinsurgency operations. The then-Taliban insurgents retook management of the war-shattered nation from a U.S.-backed Afghan authorities two weeks earlier than the international troops withdrew.
Greater than $7.1 billion in U.S.-funded army tools was within the stock of the previous Afghan authorities when it collapsed within the face of rebel Taliban nationwide assaults amid the international troop exit, the U.S. Protection Division estimated in a report launched final yr.
‘The U.S. army eliminated or destroyed almost all main tools utilized by U.S. troops in Afghanistan all through the drawdown interval in 2021,’ the report mentioned. It additionally says different tools was disabled in order that it may now not be used.
Terror exercise elevated, says Pakistan
Pakistan complains that terrorist exercise has sharply risen for the reason that Taliban seized energy in Afghanistan two years in the past.
Islamabad says the facility shift in Kabul has emboldened fugitive TTP leaders and different rebel teams sheltering on Afghan soil to maneuver with ‘higher freedom’ to orchestrate cross-border assaults.
Taliban authorities in Afghanistan have rejected allegations anybody is being allowed to make use of the nation to threaten different nations, together with Pakistan. In addition they deny fees that U.S. weapons seized by the Taliban have left the nation.
Earlier this yr, an Israeli commander instructed Newsweek journal on situation of anonymity that U.S. small arms seize in Afghanistan had ended up with Palestinian teams within the Gaza Strip.
‘The reality is that after the expulsion of the international forces [from Afghanistan] and full management of the Islamic Emirate, tools, and autos are saved and saved in depots, and nobody is allowed to smuggle or promote even a single weapon,’ chief Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid wrote on X, previously Twitter, final July.
Mujahid responded to a report printed by the Geneva-based unbiased Small Arms Survey warning that the TTP and different militants proceed to have entry to weapons of U.S.-trained and -equipped former Afghan safety forces.
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