Pakistan issues a warning regarding attacks on Afghani terrorist strongholds.

Khawaja Asif, Pakistan’s defense minister, claimed that Islamabad had warned the Afghan Taliban that it would attack terrorist hideouts there if Kabul failed to contain anti-Pakistan terrorists.
Khawaja Asif stated in an interview with Voice of America that during his mid-February visit to Kabul, he reminded the Taliban leaders to uphold their cross-border security commitments prohibiting terrorists from using their territory for attacks on Pakistan and that Islamabad would take action in the event that they did not.
“If that is not done, at some point we’ll have to… resort to some measures, which will definitely — wherever (terrorists) are, their sanctuaries on Afghan soil — we’ll have to hit them,” he said, adding, “We’ll have to hit them because we cannot tolerate this situation for long.”
Since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August 2021, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which has close ties to the Afghan Taliban, al-Qaida, and the Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K), has increased the number of terror operations planned and carried out in Pakistan.

The country registered at least 262 terrorist acts in 2022, of which the TTP was accountable for at least 89, according to Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, a think group with offices in Islamabad.
The organization ended a unilateral ceasefire in November of last year after negotiations with Islamabad failed. Since then, Pakistan has experienced almost daily attacks, the majority of which have been directed at military and police personnel.
When asked if he agreed with Kabul’s claim that the TTP does not operate from Afghan territory, Asif responded, “They still operate from their soil.”
The Taliban leadership, according to the minister, “responded very well” to the recent warning. According to Asif, the Afghan Taliban are attempting to “disentangle” themselves from the TTP.
The minister also slammed the previous military and intelligence leadership for allowing hundreds of Taliban fighters and their families to return to Pakistan in an effort to resume talks with the terrorists. Imran Khan, the former Pakistani prime minister, was also criticized by the minister. The decision, according to intelligence reports, allowed the terrorists to regroup.
According to security and government officials in Pakistan, TTP terrorists are allegedly exploiting weapons and equipment that were abandoned by US troops during the 20-year war in Afghanistan.
Asif claimed that the US troops had left behind light weapons, assault rifles, ammunition, night vision equipment, and sniper rifles for the TTP to use.
Asif questioned how sharing evidence with Washington would benefit Islamabad when asked if Pakistan had done so, noting that “Washington left… that sort of hardware on foreign soil because they couldn’t carry it.”
Asif questioned Washington’s capacity to combat terrorism effectively or the necessity of asking for its assistance to combat terrorism in Pakistan, alluding to the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan after two decades of fighting the US and coalition soldiers.
He remarked, “I can not see any sense in that. My own opinion is that we can handle this threat on our own, Asif remarked.