Zabihullah Mujahid, spokesman for the Taliban administration, has accused Pakistan of hosting a number of armed opponents of the administration and playing a role in their recent movements in Badakhshan province. In an interview with Deutsche Welle, he claimed that Islamabad is seeking to establish a “centre, office and safe place” for these opponents.<\/p>\n
Commenting on recent security incidents in Badakhshan, Mujahid said the movements of armed opponents in the province were “a conspiracy” and that the Taliban administration would respond to it “firmly,” according to him. He also alleged that Pakistan was behind the possible fall of districts such as Yftal.<\/p>\n
The Taliban spokesman further claimed that in recent days “a large delegation” of the administration’s opponents travelled to Islamabad and was hosted by Pakistan. According to him, those meetings discussed setting up an office, support, and how to advance the opponents’ activities, but he did not identify the delegation members or say when the trip took place.<\/p>\n
Mujahid also claimed that those involved in the recent insecurity entered Afghanistan with Pakistan’s support via Chitral. He said Pakistani soldiers were also among them and added that, according to him, the Taliban administration has evidence on the matter.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, armed opposition groups to the Taliban administration have repeatedly denied such claims in the past. Pointing to the historic ties between the Taliban and Pakistan, these groups accuse the Taliban administration itself of receiving support from Islamabad.<\/p>\n
Badakhshan is one of Afghanistan’s northeastern provinces and holds particular security and geographic importance because of its several mountainous districts and difficult-to-access passes. Chitral is also a region in Pakistan along parts of the border with Afghanistan and has been mentioned repeatedly in security reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid accuses Pakistan of hosting armed opponents and supporting recent unrest in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19615,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-security-incidents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}