Cross-border attack

Anti-Pakistan elements continue to use the Afghan soil for carrying out terrorist activities inside Pakistan. On Wednesday, four soldiers were martyred and six others injured in Zhob district of Balochistan when some 20 terrorists based in Afghanistan opened fire at them. When attacked, the soldiers — all belonging to the Frontier Corps — were working on a part of a fence being erected along the Pak-Afghan border. A soldier each had been martyred in two similar attacks in the last two months.

These attacks were meant to deter the soldiers from building the border fence which will make it difficult for members of Afghan-based terrorist outfits to sneak inside Pakistan and carry out their nefarious acts. Pakistan is building the fence along its 2,640km long border with Afghanistan so as to check the smuggling of goods and weapons, and deny cross-border movement of terrorists and other criminals.

The work on the border barrier continues uninterrupted over the past four years despite the threat of deadly attacks as well as other irritants like a non-performing economy, exacerbated further by the coronavirus onslaught. About 90 per cent of the fencing work, according to the ISPR, has been completed. The border fencing, meanwhile, becomes all the more relevant given the scheduled withdrawal of the American troops from Afghanistan by the end of next month, as it would stop the spillover of a potential turmoil into Pakistan.

In the wake of the Wednesday’s attack, Islamabad has once again asked Kabul to rein in the organised terrorists groups operating from its soil. The Afghan mission in Islamabad has been told to convey the concerns to relevant Afghan officials, according to the Foreign Office spokesperson. The Afghan government must get serious about following the mutually agreed protocols and SOPs to avoid recurrence of such incidents.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 7^th, 2021.

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