Ghani nails Pak for terrorism in Afghanistan

Holding Pakistan responsible for cross border terrorism and providing safe haven to extremists, Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani on Sunday urged Islamabad as well as the international community to work mutually for bringing peace and stability in the region.

He reiterated that Islamabad practices selective cleansing of terrorists as Kabul has often accused the Pakistani security forces of differentiating between the 'good Taliban' and the 'bad Taliban'.

"The military operations in Pakistan have brought a major but selective displacement of Pakistani extremist networks and their allies in Afghanistan," said Ghani at the Heart of Asia conference in Amritsar, adding Pakistan is in an undeclared war with Afghanistan.

"Despite our intense engagement with Pakistan on bilateral and multilateral bases the undeclared war..... (has) also intensified during 2016 with special intensity right after the Brussels conference," he said.

President Ghani also warned that around 30 terrorist groups are attempting to establish permanent presence and foothold in the country as he called for a joint effort to identify the cross-border terrorism.

Blaming Pakistan squarely for providing safe havens to terrorists, President Ghani said, "The response of the states has been fragmented and some still provide sanctuaries in support or tolerate these networks as Kakazada (Mullah Rahmatullah Kakazada) one of the key figures in the Taliban movement recently said that if they did not have sanctuary in Pakistan they would not last a month."

He also suggested there is a need to tackle criminal economics and document as to who is benefitting from producing, processing, trafficking and consuming it.

"This requires an international effort without blame game to be able to uproot the basis of this phenomenon," he said.

"We need to identify cross-border terrorism and a fund to combat terrorism. Pakistan has pledged USD 500m for Afghanistan's development. This amount can be spent to contain extremism," Ghani said, directly addressing Pakistan Foreign Affairs Adviser Sartaj Aziz, who was in attendance.

"We propose an Asian and international regime whatever is accepted particularly to our neighbour in Pakistan to verify cross-frontier activities and terrorist operations. We don't want blame game we want verification," he urged.

The conference witnessed participation of representatives from over 30 countries including China, United States, Russia, Iran and Pakistan to discuss peace, cooperation and economic development in Afghanistan, the permanent chair of the Heart of Asia (HoA) conference.