India exposes Pak connection of terrorists based in Afghanistan

NEW DELHI: India has ramped up global cooperation to tackle terror organizations such as Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and ISIL-K in Afghanistan. India has shared documents with the international community to establish that Pakistan continues to be behind JeM and LeT there. National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval’s recent meetings with his counterparts in Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States were part of this campaign which will see a more aggressive push on the part of diplomatic and security officials from India, sources told The Sunday Guardian. During a meeting in Moscow last week, Doval urged the global community to increase cooperation so as to tackle the terror organizations like LeT and JeM that are active in Afghanistan, with the Taliban taking no action against them. Sources said Doval and other officials accompanying him expressed concern over Pakistan’s backing to these organizations. In a clear reference to Pakistan, Doval said at the Moscow meet that no country should be allowed to use Afghan territory to export terrorism and radicalisation. While participating in a multilateral meeting on Afghanistan in the Russian capital, Doval stressed the need for intensified intelligence and security cooperation to tackle these terror outfits. Sources told The Sunday Guardian that Doval had raised these points during his meeting with his counterpart in the US, Jake Sullivan and US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley. Similarly, NSA Doval also discussed the threat of terror from Afghanistan during his brief meeting with his UK counterpart, Tim Barrow and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Diplomatic sources said that India would be discussing Afghan-based terror issues during the high-level meetings to be held in March in Delhi. The meetings of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) NSAs, G20 Foreign Ministers and Quad Foreign Ministers would focus on how to deal with the menace of terrorism emanating from Afghanistan apart from other issues. “Pakistan’s support to LeT and JeM, despite the country facing a massive financial crisis, would obviously be discussed during bilateral talks here,” sources said. “We have documents ready with us that prove Pakistan’s support to LeT and JeM which are using Afghan soil for anti-India activities,” sources added.
The revelations in a report by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on the threat posed by ISIL-K in Afghanistan are quite significant. The report says that the ISIL-K have “threatened to launch terrorist attacks against the embassies of India, Iran and China in Afghanistan and by targeting them, the terror group sought to undermine the relationship between the Taliban and the UN member states in the Central and South Asia region.” “The activities of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant-Khorasan (ISIL-K) remained a significant terrorist threat in Central and South Asia, and the group retained ambitions to conduct external operations,” said the 16th report of the Secretary-General on the threat posed by ISIL (Da’esh) to international peace and security and the range of United Nations efforts in support of member states in countering the threat. Several UN reports have already said thousands of LeT, JeM and Daesh fighters are currently in Afghanistan.
“The UN report would be used by India to present its case during the upcoming meetings and bilateral talks,” officials told this newspaper. “These inputs confirm what India has been cautioning against,” sources added. Meanwhile, UN Security Council members have hailed the significance of the “Delhi Declaration” adopted at a special meeting of the UN Counter-Terrorism Committee in India last year, saying it offers a “solid basis” to counter the use of new and emerging technologies for terrorist purposes and symbolises the Council’s “shared determination” to address the challenge.