Taliban's resolve?

The decree reportedly issued by the Taliban leadership calling upon the TTP to halt attacks against Pakistan is a welcome development. Nonetheless, the development necessitates some concrete verification from the Afghan regime, as it is merely based on media reports. Exterminating the militants, especially the outlawed TTP, has been a fundamental demand from Islamabad, and it is high time Kabul exhibited responsibility to ensure that warlord-ism was done away with and serenity was restored on both sides of the divide. It's no revelation that the TTP, the ISIL, the Al-Qaeda and others are using Afghan soil to carry out cross-border terrorist activities. The spike in terrorism in K-P and Balochistan manifest their jingoism, and the Taliban 2.0 dispensation is squarely to be blamed for that.

Trust deficit between Afghanistan and Pakistan sits at the heart of this issue and must be resolved earnestly. The military option that Pakistan exercised against the militants holed up inside Afghanistan came only after Kabul's admitted failure to act against their "guests" for reasons of political exigency. Pakistan has time and again reached out to the Taliban rulers and engaged them in talks. The Urumqi dialogue held under Chinese mediation in April is a case in point. But all these efforts failed to materialise due to Kabul's apparent contempt toward Islamabad and its growing alignment with New Delhi's strategic interests, which permits extraterritorial activities that complicate regional dynamics.

Meanwhile, Taliban supreme commander Mullah Hibatullah Akhunzada must make his stance clear as regards the reported decree banning TTP attacks against Pakistan. It is worth appreciating, however, that last year more than 2,000 Afghan religious scholars had pronounced an edict against terrorism. That pronouncement must be heard in the corridors of power of the revulsion-ridden country. The Afghan rulers must condemn terrorism and act against the TTP, and likes, and flush them out of Afghanistan. Relocating them, or silencing them tactfully for a while, is no solution. The menace of terrorism must be uprooted branch and root.