Pakistan warns against sheltering militants amid tensions with Afghanistan

Pakistan's political and military leadership has vowed no country will be allowed to shelter militants staging attacks against Pakistani soil, amid rising tensions with neighboring Afghanistan.

According to Press TV, in a statement released on Tuesday, the Pakistani government said “no country will be allowed to provide sanctuaries to terrorists” and their attacks “will be dealt with the full force of the state”.

The warning came after Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, newly appointed Military Chief General Asim Munir and other top officials attended a meeting of the National Security Committee (NSC) in the capital Islamabad.

The committee vowed that there will be “zero tolerance for terrorism in Pakistan" and those militants will be dealt with using the “full force of the state,” the statement said, without naming any country. However, it was an apparent reference to neighboring Afghanistan.

In a tweet on Tuesday, PM Sharif said Pakistan will “adopt zero-tolerance policy for terrorists challenging its writ”. “Peace is non-negotiable,” he wrote.

Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khwaja Asif also told a private news channel on Monday night that Afghanistan’s soil is being used by armed groups to launch attacks on his country. “We have spoken to the Afghanistan government and we will keep saying that … their soil is being used for cross-border terrorism.”

The remarks have prompted a sharp response from the Taliban government in Kabul which called the allegation “incorrect” and “regrettable”.

Zabihullah Mujahid, spokesman for the Taliban government in Afghanistan, said Afghanistan “wants good relations with all its neighboring countries, including Pakistan.”

The developments come amid a spike in attacks by the militant Pakistani Taliban, many of whom are hiding in neighboring Afghanistan. The attacks are on the rise across Pakistan, especially in the northwest near the Afghan border.

ME