ISLAMABAD: The Foreign Office on Wednesday raised “profound concern” at the presence of weapons left behind in Afghanistan following the withdrawal of its troops in August 2021, after US President Donald Trump demanded the return of “billions of dollars” of equipment.
“These weapons have been used by terrorist organisations, including the TTP [Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan], to carry out terrorist attacks in Pakistan,” FO spokesperson Shafqat Ali Khan said in a statement on Wednesday.
He noted that Pakistan has been “repeatedly calling upon the de facto authorities in Kabul to take all necessary measures to ensure that these weapons do not fall into the wrong hands”.
On the eve of his presidential inauguration, Trump at a public rally threatened Afghanistan to snap all the financial assistance if the nation does not return US aircraft, air-to-ground munitions, vehicles and communications equipment.
“If we’re going to pay billions of dollars a year, tell them we’re not going to give them the money unless they give back our military equipment,” he said.
However, Taliban reportedly refused to return any of the military equipment and urged the US to provide them with more advanced weapons to fight Daesh.
According to a report by the US Department of Defence in 2022, the US left behind $7 billion worth of military equipment in Afghanistan which was quickly seized by Taliban fighters as they swept the country.
The US forces tried to dismantle or destroy as much of their machinery as they could in the last weeks of their chaotic pull-out. However, huge amounts still fell to the Taliban in August 2021.
Although it was Trump’s first administration that signed the deal with the Taliban to withdraw forces from Afghanistan, the president strongly slammed the way the Joe Biden administration handled the pullout.
Biden carried out the agreement, with the Western-backed Afghanistan government swiftly collapsing and the Taliban retaking power. The scenes of chaos in Kabul drew criticism, especially when scores of Afghans and around 13 American troops died in a suicide bombing at the city’s airport.
Pakistan witnessed a surge in violent attacks since the Taliban returned to power, particularly in the bordering provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.
The year 2024 turned out to be the deadliest for Pakistan’s civil and military security forces in a decade with at least 685 fatalities and 444 terror attacks, according to “CRSS Annual Security Report 2024” issued by Centre for Security and Strategic Studies.
