UNITED NATIONS - A new United Nations report has once again highlighted the threat posed to Pakistan by the Afghanistan-based Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the terrorist group which has conducted numerous deadly "cross-border" attacks and operations.
The report-- 13th in the series-- by the UN Security Council Monitoring Team on Afghanistan states that the that TTP remains focused on long-term campaign against the Pakistani state with its several thousand fighters in Afghanistan.
"TTP constitutes the largest component of foreign terrorist fighters in Afghanistan, with their number estimated to be several thousand, according to the report released on Friday. "TTP has arguably benefited the most of all the foreign extremist groups in Afghanistan from the Taliban takeover. It has conducted numerous attacks and operations in Pakistan..."
"The presence of 'several thousand' TTP fighters in Afghanistan, as stated in the latest UN report, quite understandably poses a serious and credible threat from Pakistan’s perspective," a European diplomat told APP on the basis of anonymity.
The UN Monitoring Team's earlier report had focused on the global threat posed by Al-Qaeda, Da'esh and related groups as well as the one before that had also underlined increasing cross-border attacks by TTP from the Afghan soil as result of the re-unification of the terrorist group in Afghanistan.
On its part, Pakistan had shared a dossier with the UN Security Council, containing evidence of financial and material support provided by Indian intelligence agencies to TTP to conduct cross-border terrorist attacks against Pakistani military and civilian targets.
TTP was also responsible for the heinous attack against the Army Public School in Peshawar in which over 150 children were killed.
Separately, quoting information provided by a “Member State,” the Monitoring Team report mentions the presence of defunct Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) in Afghanistan, something its several previous reports did not have.
