Islamabad,<\/p>\n
Pakistan\u2019s leadership has slammed the top US commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John W. Nicholson, a day after he claimed that Washington \u201cknows the Afghan Taliban leadership is in Quetta and Peshawar\u201d.<\/p>\n
Turning the tables, Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal told Dawn newspaper that the \u201cTaliban were using Afghanistan as the launch pad for their operations, both inside and outside Pakistan\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said the Taliban had no need to hide in Pakistan, since they held more than 40 per cent of Afghanistan, the daily reported on Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they have control over so much land and resources in Afghanistan, it means they have hideouts there, not in Pakistan,\u201d Iqbal said.<\/p>\n
Nicholson told Kabul\u2019s Tolo News on Saturday that Washington was aware of the Afghan Taliban leadership\u2019s presence in the two Pakistani cities, adding that the US military would continue to put pressure on Taliban sanctuaries inside and outside Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Quetta shura, Peshawar shura\u2014these shuras are identified by cities inside Pakistan. We know Afghan Taliban leaders are in these areas. Support for terrorists and insurgents has to be reduced – (it) has to be stopped,\u201d Gen. Nicholson said.<\/p>\n
The general\u2019s comments elicited a sharp reaction from Islamabad, which has already been fuming over US President Donald Trump\u2019s harsh remarks, with government ministers calling upon the US to stop blaming Pakistan for its failure in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
Iqbal said Pakistani authorities had been conducting comprehensive security operations in different parts of the country for four years and had cleared a large area, including North Waziristan.<\/p>\n
\u201cPakistan is fully committed to rooting out terrorism and no other country can match us in terms of the number of sacrifices made in the war on terror,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Separately, Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif said the US should refrain from blaming its 16 years of failures in Afghanistan on Pakistan.<\/p>\n
\u201cAmerica used Pakistan as its ally, but Pakistan suffered unbearable losses in the war on terror. If the US doesn\u2019t trust Pakistan, it should make preparations to repatriate the Afghan refugees Pakistan has been hosting for nearly 35 years,\u201d he told Geo News on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Asif claimed that over 90 per cent of the attacks in Pakistan were carried out from Afghanistan and also said that Afghan soldiers were selling American arms and ammunition to the Taliban, the report said.<\/p>\n
Pakistan People\u2019s Party spokesperson Farhatullah Babar said that both Trump and Gen. Nicholson\u2019s statements indicated that the US wanted to blame all its failed policies on Pakistan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Islamabad, Pakistan\u2019s leadership has slammed the top US commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John W. Nicholson, a day after he claimed that Washington \u201cknows the Afghan Taliban leadership is in Quetta and Peshawar\u201d. Turning the tables, Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal told Dawn newspaper that the \u201cTaliban were using Afghanistan as the launch pad for their operations, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3185,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3184"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3186,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3184\/revisions\/3186"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}