New Delhi claim rejected: Afghan Taliban deny sending fighters abroad

Rubbish assertions that Pakistan intelligence agencies may push Afghan militants into Indian Kashmir.

ISLAMABAD:

Afghan Taliban Wednesday rejected as nonsense claims by Indian intelligence officials that Pakistani security agencies may push the Afghan militants into Indian-occupied Kashmir.

Indian media quoted unnamed security officials as saying that Pakistan’s ISI may now try to increasingly push battle-hardened Afghan Taliban into held Kashmir.

“The trend is expected to grow further as the 2014 deadline for Nato-led forces’ withdrawal from Afghanistan draws near,” The Times of India quoted officials as saying.



The Afghan Taliban dismissed the Indian claims and said it is not Taliban policy to send its fighters out of Afghanistan.

Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, said that the Taliban are fighting hundreds of thousands invading forces in Afghanistan and that their operations are only limited to Afghanistan.

“We have been fighting foreign forces and their local supporters for 12 years in Afghanistan and we do not have time and resources to send fighters to other countries,” Mujahid told The Express Tribune.

Indian officials came up with these allegations a day after Indian defence officials claimed that five Indian soldiers were killed along the Line of Control.

The officials were quoted as saying that the Taliban militants are deployed in occupied Kashmir to launch attacks on Indian forces.

Indian ambassador in Kabul in a veiled reference to Pakistan claimed on Tuesday that attacks in Afghanistan are planned outside the country. He was speaking at a gathering to distribute financial assistance to the family members of those killed and injured in the suicide bomb attack near the Indian consulate in the eastern Jalalabad city.

Taliban had denied involvement in the attack, which had killed nine people including eight students of a nearby religious school.

Meanwhile President Hamid Karzai has asked the Taliban to start peace talks inside Afghanistan if they are sincere in peace process, his office said.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 8^th, 2013.