Alwaght- A high-level Afghan delegation comprising the country’s interior minister and the chief of National Directorate of Security (NDS) visited Pakistan on Wednesday at a time when tension between the neighbors is simmering over accusations that Pakistan offers a safe haven for Taliban militants.
The visit comes days after more than 120 afghan people were killed in two Taliban attacks in the capital, Kabul, that killed, which Afghan government has blamed on Haqqani network militants believed to operate out of Pakistan.
The Afghan team will present documentary evidence and phone tap information linking individuals and groups based in Pakistan with the Kabul attacks, a senior Afghan military source told Reuters.
“The Afghan government had requested that a high-level delegation would like to visit Pakistan with a message from the Afghan president,” Pakistan’s foreign office spokesman, Mohammad Faisal, said in a Twitter message.
On Saturday, a vehicle painted as an ambulance exploded in a Taliban suicide attack in one of the most well-protected parts of Kabul, killing more than 100 people and wounding at least 235.
It followed a Taliban-claimed attack a week earlier that killed more than 20 people in a siege of the city’s Intercontinental Hotel.
Afghanistan’s intelligence chief Masoom Stanekzai blamed neighboring Pakistan for the deadly car bombing.
Afghanistan's Tolo news agency quoted Stanekzai as saying on Sunday that the Afghan government and people have realized that the conflict is not an internal one but an “imposed war.”
Stanekzai told a press conference that Afghans face a coordinated, ideological war in which suicide bombers were trained in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, and Pakistani clerics denounce violence at home but legitimize it in Afghanistan.
“The war in Afghanistan is not rooted in the country. People need to have a complete understanding of Afghanistan’s security landscape. [The] Afghan government and people have realized that this is an imposed war, it is not an internal issue.”
Stanekzai pointed to the seizure of 4,000 tons of explosives over the past month – explosives which he said Afghanistan does not have the capacity to produce.
“Madrassas [Islamic religious schools], training camps, and safe havens exist beyond Afghanistan’s borders,” he said.
