RAWALPINDI (The Thursday Times) — The Afghan Taliban do not have the capability to absorb the “punishment” Pakistan can inflict on them, the military’s spokesperson, Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, said in an interview, warning that Pakistan is ready for any attempt to test it, including with drones.
“Whatever they want to send, they can; they may try. We have the capability to take them on,” the Director General of Inter-Services Public Relations said when asked about the threat from drones in Taliban hands. “They don’t have, I think, the capability to then absorb the punishment that we can put on them.”
Chaudhry said any drone capability the Afghan Taliban had was not their own but supplied by their sponsors. He called India the “biggest terror sponsor” and said the Afghan Taliban and the terrorist groups operating against Pakistan were acting as Indian proxies. Recalling Pakistan’s conflict with India, he said New Delhi had sent “dozens and dozens” of sophisticated drones. “We turned them into dust everywhere,” he said, adding that Pakistan’s readiness had since moved further ahead.
He said terrorist formations were coming from Afghanistan and getting their weapons there, and that Afghan citizens and even Taliban regime personnel had been found among groups attacking Pakistan. “We only ask you that don’t support terrorism inside Pakistan. Stop harbouring the terrorist leaders,” he said. “If you do it, then there will be a cost. And we are capable of imposing that cost and we have a clear strategy how to impose that cost.”
Chaudhry said Islamabad was not seeking Afghanistan’s isolation and remained engaged with Kabul, and that how Afghanistan is governed is for Afghans to decide. He urged regional countries and the wider world to press the Taliban to “act like a state”, and rejected allegations that Pakistan was hosting anti-Taliban groups. “What Afghanistan is producing right now, it has only two products: terrorism and drugs,” he said.
Asked whether the military used artificial intelligence to identify targets in Afghanistan, he declined to give operational details. “We are using all sorts of technologies. We are a technology-savvy army,” he said.
His remarks follow Pakistan’s rejection of the Taliban’s attempts at “shifting blame” on terrorism, and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s statement that Washington does not want Pakistan targeted by terrorism from Afghan soil.
