Pakistan urges joint anti-terror efforts with Afghanistan following border clashes

By Aamir Latif

KARACHI, Pakistan (AA) — Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Wednesday urged neighboring countries, including Afghanistan, to “come and sit” and devise a joint strategy to combat terrorism.

“I request the neighboring countries to come and sit to devise a plan against terrorism with sincerity of purpose and work towards eradicating it,” Sharif said while presiding over a meeting of the apex committee, a government body that oversees the implementation of anti-terrorism policies, in the capital Islamabad, state-run Pakistan television reported.

“I am hopeful that our neighboring country will carefully consider my invitation,” he said, in a thinly veiled reference to Afghanistan.

Sharif’s remarks came amid heightening tensions between the two neighbors, which include aerial strikes and border clashes.

He warned that Islamabad will no longer tolerate any cross-border terrorism.

“We will not tolerate any terrorism from across the border. Under no circumstances,” he said.

On Monday, Pakistan launched pre-dawn airstrikes on “militant hideouts” inside Afghanistan that killed at least eight people.

The airstrikes, Islamabad said, were in response to a series of suicide bombings on a security check post in North Waziristan tribal district, which killed seven army troops.

Kabul, however, asserted that the airstrikes, which targeted southeastern Paktika and Khost provinces, killed three children and five women.

The airstrikes led to border skirmishes between the two forces before the guns from both sides fell silent on Tuesday.

In January, Pakistan struck "terrorist hideouts" in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchestan province in response to the latter’s targeting of a “militant base” for the militant group Jaish al-Adl in the border town of Panjgur in southwestern Balochistan province.

Islamabad accuses Afghanistan of failing to prevent militants from the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a conglomerate of various militant groups, from carrying out attacks in Pakistan before returning to Afghanistan for refuge. Afghanistan has denied the charges.