Pakistan rejects ex-US envoy Khalilzad’s 'baseless' allegations of arming Afghans to fight Taliban

Pakistan rejects ex-US envoy Khalilzad’s 'baseless' allegations of arming Afghans to fight Taliban

The information ministry on Saturday rejected former US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad’s “baseless and misleading allegations” that Pakistan was arming former Afghans to fight the Taliban or their supporting terrorist groups. The ministry’s “fact-check”, posted on X, came a day after Khalilzad, who served as special representative to Afghanistan during the first Trump administration, claimed Pakistan was “recruiting Afghans to fight against anti-Pakistan insurgents”. “His sweeping baseless assertions merely recycle speculative narratives as part of his personal agenda to prop [the] terrorism-supporting Taliban regime,” the information ministry said. It rebuked Khalilzad, saying his “paddling of such unsubstantiated allegations only exposes his skewed agenda-based views”. The ministry highlighted that it was “particularly misleading to conflate Pakistan’s legitimate counterterrorism operations against terrorist organisations operating from inside Afghan Taliban regime-controlled areas threatening its citizens with allegations of recruiting Afghan nationals or sponsoring armed groups inside Afghanistan”. “Pakistan remains at the forefront of the fight against terrorism and has made enormous sacrifices in protecting regional peace and security,” it emphasised. It went on to point out that successive monitoring reports issued by the United Nations had documented the continued presence and activities of terrorist organisations, including the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Al-Qaeda, inside Afghanistan. “Khalilzad’s allegations conveniently divert attention from the Afghan Taliban regime’s responsibility to prevent its territory from being used by India-sponsored proxies for terrorism against Pakistan,” the statement added. More to follow