Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has urged the international community to help in capacity building of the Afghan interim authorities to take on threats of terrorism.
Taking part in a panel discussion in Munich Security Conference, he said that the international community wanted the Afghan interim government to live up to its obligations and commitments in areas like women education, all-inclusive government and tackling of potential threats from terrorism, emanating from terrorist groups of Daesh, TTP and Al Qaeda.
Bilawal said the global community should convince the Afghan interim government to take on the threat of terrorism and demonstrate its will.
He said Pakistan had helped Afghanistan in the past and would continue to do so as it had hosted the largest number of Afghan refugees on its soil.
The foreign minister reiterated that a peaceful Afghanistan is vital for the stability of the region and the international community must play its role in this regard.
Bilawal Bhutto said the most important issue regarding Afghanistan in the region was the “security and terrorist threat emanating out” of the country, adding that there was a whole “alphabet soup” of terrorist organisations that were based out of Afghanistan.
He rued that not enough seriousness was paid to the issue by the international community or the Afghan government.
“The concern is that if we and the interim government don’t take these groups seriously and they don’t demonstrate the will and the capacity to take on terrorist groups then they will conduct terrorist activities in the region first — we are already witnessing an uptick in terrorist activity in Pakistan since the fall of Kabul — but it won’t be long before it reaches somewhere else.”
FM Bilawal urged the international community to act “pre-actively” rather than reactively after the “nightmare scenario”.
“The key is to convince … the interim government in Afghanistan with the international community’s consensus, to take on terrorism within their borders and demonstrate the will to do so,” he added.
He further told world leaders to find a way to build the capacity for the interim Afghan government to help it build a standing army.
“They don’t have a standing army, nor a counter-terrorism force or even proper border security,” he said. “In that situation, even if they have the will, they don’t have the capacity to deal with this [terrorist] threat which is a problem, first for the imminent neighbours and then the international community”.
The foreign minister cited how “very little attention” was given to Afghanistan after the fall of Kabul and the ongoing Ukraine war.
