Pakistan has reportedly told Afghanistan's Taliban leadership to tackle the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and use this challenge to establish its counter-terrorism credentials in the eyes of the international community. The government has also asked the Afghan Taliban to take Islamabad’s concerns “seriously”. 

"We are telling the Taliban leadership to consider the TTP as a test case," The Express Tribune quoted a senior Pakistan official as saying. This came after the TTP, which enjoys sanctuaries in Afghanistan, stepped up its attacks on Pakistan security forces in recent months.

“In the last week of December, it killed eight Pakistani soldiers in half a dozen attacks in Pakistan’s northwest region,” noted former Indian envoy to Pakistan Sharat Sabrawal in his Af-Pak Digest produced for the Ananta Aspen Center. 

The TTP, which shares ideological and fraternal ties with the Afghan Taliban, pledges its allegiance to Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, the supreme leader of the Afghan Taliban. Since the Taliban’s return to power in August, Islamabad has been pressing the group to reign the TTP. However, Islamabad is becoming increasingly concerned over the Taliban’s reluctance to take on the TTP. 

"If the Taliban can't address concerns of Pakistan then who would trust them and their promise of cutting ties to al-Qaeda and other such groups," said a senior Pakistan official involved in the discussions with the Afghan Taliban. 

Last year in November, the Afghan Taliban had facilitated peace talks, and subsequently a month-long ceasefire, between the Pakistan government and the TTP. However, Pakistan, which backed the Afghan Taliban’s two-decade insurgency, is now expecting the group to take their concerns on the TTP seriously. 

It has been almost five months since the Taliban’s return to power and the regime has failed to win recognition by any country. Currently, Pakistan is the only country lobbying for the Taliban’s recognition.   

"It will be damaging for the Afghan Taliban if they fail to take into account Pakistan's concerns," the official said, adding the failure to do so will damage the Taliban’s counter-terrorism assurances. "A global community, particularly the West will ask look they can't even satisfy Pakistan so how come they would address terror concerns of other countries," he added. 

Furthermore, the Pakistan government is under domestic pressure to be tough in dealing with the Afghan Taliban, especially after the latter’s defiant attitude on the Durand Line, the internationally recognized border between the two nations. 

The charged rhetoric against Pakistan by a section of Taliban leaders has also caused considerable embarrassment to Islamabad, which had been selling the Islamist regime in Afghanistan as something favorable to them to the domestic audience in Pakistan. 

(SAM)