The Taliban government in Afghanistan has, for the first time, proposed to Pakistan that it should bear the cost of disarming and rehabilitating the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) members and their families from the Pak-Afghan border areas, according to a media report.
The Afghan interim government’s proposal includes disarming the TTP members and relocation of their families from the Pak-Afghan border, the report said.
The Afghan Taliban has said it is willing to disarm and relocate the outlawed TTP militants and their families across the border but they want Islamabad to bear the cost of the proposed rehabilitation, the report said.
The meeting was attended by high-profile members from the political and military establishment. It comes after Defence Minister Khawaja Asif and the Director General of the country’s spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Lt. General Nadeem Anjum, met the top brass of the Afghanistan Taliban regime in Kabul to share “irrefutable evidence” with them about the presence of the TTP in Pakistan.
Pakistan is yet to respond to the Afghan Taliban’s idea as there is skepticism within the top brass that this proposal might not be feasible, the report said.
There are around 12,000 TTP militants in Afghanistan and, with their families, that number surges to well beyond 30,000, it added.
Pakistan has been hit by a wave of terrorism, mostly in the country’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, but also in Balochistan, the Punjab town of Mianwali, which borders the restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and also in the Sindh province.
The TTP, which is believed to be close to Al-Qaeda, has been blamed for several deadly attacks across Pakistan, including an attack on army headquarters in 2009, assaults on military bases, and the 2008 bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad.
The group was behind the heinous Army Public School attack in Peshawar in 2014, in which over 130 students were killed.
