Islamabad: Pakistan, which celebrated Taliban takeover of Afghanistan is now waking up to the realisation that the group’s victory is inciting terrorists into insurgency in its own region, according to media reports.
When Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan applauded the Taliban’s victory and said that they broke “shackles of slavery”, he was unaware that the outfit’s victory in a neighbouring country can trigger militants in his own.
For the weeks, various Pakistan’s top leaders and retired army generals celebrated the Taliban’s victory so as the militants in Pakistan, as they are sworn enemies of Pakistani generals and the government, reported The Washington Post.
Now, Islamabad is noticing the unrest washing across the Afghan border. After the recent victory of the Taliban, the militant groups are incited to create an insurgency in Pakistan, The Washington Post added.
The Taliban, not only inspired the militants but also Pakistan’s hard-line religious parties that aim to reshape the country in a more fundamentalist Islamist image.
Director of the Pakistani Institute for Peace Studies in Islamabad, Muhammad Amir Rana said, “With the Taliban taking over, anti-Pakistan terrorist groups will be emboldened, but it doesn’t end there. There could be an emergence of a new war of narratives in the country, which will transform ongoing debates about state and society and the role that religion plays,” the Washington Post reported on Sunday.
Extremist and nonviolent groups alike, he added, “will think, ‘If Islamic rule could happen in Afghanistan, why can’t it happen here?’
Pakistani officials are also afraid that Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (Pakistani Taliban) could resurface in the wake of the Taliban’s victory in the neighbouring country as TTP is allied to the Afghan Taliban.
In the last decade, TTP conducted nearly 1,800 attacks on Pakistani state and civilian targets.
Recently, TTP also celebrated the Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan and claimed another attack last week in which two Pakistani soldiers were killed.