RAWALPINDI: Pakistan Ex-Servicemen Society (PESS) President retired Lt Gen Abdul Qayyum on Tuesday stressed the need for improving relations with Afghanistan to control terror incidents in Pakistan.

“We are facing two types of terrorism: kinetic and digital. Both of them exist in a powerful nexus,” he said.

Addressing a press conference at the Rawalpindi Press Club, Mr Qayyum said Pakistan had paid a heavy price to contain terrorism by losing the lives of its trained armed forces personnel, policemen and other law enforcement agencies.

“Due to terrorism, Pakistan lost almost 550 lives in 2021, 980 in 2022 and 1,524 lives in 2023. A total of 575 armed forces personnel have been martyred in 2024,” he said.

“We can control terrorism by diplomacy. We should not have communication gaps with our neighbours, especially Afghanistan, both at the government and military level.”

He said Afghanistan’s deputy foreign minister had appealed to the outlawed TTP to cease their terrorism activities in Pakistan. This is an acceptance of defeat by Afghan authorities at the hands of TTP. “We can’t afford an antagonised Afghanistan in our neighbour in addition to an antagonised India,” he said.

“Pakistan is the fourth most terrorism affected country in the world while India is in 14th and Bangladesh in 32ndin the list. Pakistan has experienced 56 per cent surge in terrorism during last year.” He said there was a need to improve border management in collaboration with Afghanistan. He said sealing of the border would be implemented with cooperation of Afghanistan authorities.

He said the ISPR director general had mentioned border management in his speech on Monday.

Pakistan has almost 1000 military forts out of which 400 are in KP and 600 in Balochistan. The border between Pakistan and Afghanistan is 2640 kilometres long. Though 800 drones were monitoring the border it is not humanly possible to control infiltration as Afghanistan authorities did not check it on their side of the border.

The PESS president condemned a resolution passed in the KP assembly and said, “It is regretful that a resolution was passed against Azam-i-Istekham operation without any understanding. Azam-i-Istekham operation is a reinforcement of National Action Plan.”

He said Pakistan was housing 3-4 million Afghan refugees and the UN was not paying attention to them.

US left Afghanistan in same manner as it had left Vietnam. They left Pakistan to deal with TTP and other terrorist organisations which are backed by RAW of India. They also left behind $7 billion worth of arms including 78 aircraft, 9,524 air-to-ground missiles, 40,000 military vehicles, 300,000 weapons, 1.5 million small arms and 42,000 night vision equipment,” he said.

He said most of the arms left by US were in the hands of the terrorists. “No ragtag terrorists can attack 7th largest and battle-hardened armed forces. Their facilitators are present in Afghanistan and at the international level.”

He was of the opinion that the US left its arms in Afghanistan to make sure that Pakistan remained destabilised. “They are afraid that the army can be a threat to India. They want to keep Pakistan under pressure for containment of China by derailing CPEC and other projects,” he said. The PESS chief said TTP had no base in Pakistan. “It is not an organised insurgency. We appeal to our brothers in Afghanistan to deal with them in their area and we will deal with them in Pakistan.”

He demanded that the government should pay families of martyred and handicapped armed forces personnel at least Rs37,000 pension.

Published in Dawn, July 24th, 2024