@@INCLUDE-HTTPS-REDIRECT-METATAG@@ Safe havens are inside Afghanistan, not outside, Pakistan: Maleeha Lodhi to UNSC

Safe havens are inside Afghanistan, not outside, Pakistan: Maleeha Lodhi to UNSC

 

 

Pakistan has told the UN Security Council on 22nd June that the Afghan Taliban’s “safe havens” are inside, not outside Afghanistan, given the large areas they control in the war-torn country.

 

Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi, permanent representative of Pakistan to the UN, said during a debate on Afghanistan that the resilience of the insurgency led by the Taliban cannot be explained away by convenient references to external ‘safe havens’ or ‘support centers’.

 

She told the 15 member Council that Pakistan is “implementing border controls, including the fencing and monitoring of vulnerable sections of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border”.

 

What the neighbors think about it?

 

Iran

Chairman of the Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi Lashing out at Pakistan's government for failing to prevent terror attacks against Iran from its soil,  said that the neighboring country has become a "safe haven" for terrorist cells. (29th April 2017)

In a letter to Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani said that given the warm and friendly ties with Pakistan, he was extremely disheartened to see militants using Pakistani soil to launch their attacks on people in Iran.

 

Afghanistan

 

On 20th June 2017 in a dialogue, organized by Washington-based think-tank Indus, Afghanistan’s ambassador to US Hamdullah Mohib said that Pakistan is main supporter of terrorist in the region. He said "We call it an undeclared war because the objectives are not set. We don't know what the objectives are for Pakistan. And that's something that we have been trying to discover,"

 

The US stand on it?

Pentagon said in its six-monthly report to the Congress that "Afghan-oriented militant groups, including Taliban and Haqqani Network senior leadership, retain freedom of action from safe havens inside Pakistani territory." Militant groups, including the Taliban and Haqqani senior leadership, retained safe havens inside Pakistani territory and sustained Pakistani efforts to disrupt active Haqqani Network threats were not observed during the reporting period, the Pentagon said in its report ending November 2016.

 

The Pentagon, in its report running into nearly 100 pages, said the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region remains a sanctuary for various groups. These include, the Taliban, al Qaeda, al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), Haqqani Network, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Islamic State, and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. "This sanctuary and these groups remain a security challenge for both countries and pose a threat to regional stability and security," it said.