Pakistan interior minister Sheikh Rashid has recently said in an interview that Pakistan has taken care of the Taliban for an extended time. “All top Taliban leaders were born and mentioned in Pakistan. This has been our ‘service’ that we trained them and lots of more could be studying,” Sheikh Rashid said in an interview on Hum News programme called ‘Breaking Point with Malick’.
At an equivalent time, he countered the international criticism of Pakistan aiding the Taliban and said, “Mullah Baradar was in Pakistan jail. America asked us to release him.”
“We want peace on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Peace suits both Pakistan and Afghanistan border,” Sheikh Rashid said.
This comes at a time when Pakistan is officially throwing its weight behind Afghanistan and is additionally refuting allegations that Pakistan had a hand within the fall of Afghanistan. Pakistan secretary of state Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Wednesday said the planet must not abandon Afghanistan as that might have dangerous consequences. “Such a move would have dangerous consequences and nobody would be spared,” the secretary of state said.
This is not the primary time that Pakistan leaders admitted the country’s link with the Taliban. Neelam Irshad Sheikh earlier said that the Taliban will help Pakistan in Kashmir.
Pakistan’s aid to the Taliban remains an secret as Pakistan attempts hard to distance itself from the Taliban. Reports have revealed that within the last call between US President Joe Biden then Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on July 23, Ghani informed Biden that Afghanistan was under full-scale invasion and therefore the Taliban weren’t alone. There was full support of Pakistan and a number of other international terrorists, mostly from Pakistan, had already infiltrated Afghanistan at that point .
Pakistan’s ambassador to the us , Asad Majeed Khan, has recently countered the allegation that Pakistan had an important role behind the increase of the Taliban in his scathing letter where he said that the autumn of Kabul was due to the corrupt army and not Pakistan.