India’s interests and goals in Afghanistan have been always on the target of Pakistan-based terror groups such as LeT, the Taliban, JeM and al-Qaeda. Their objectives are creating sanctuaries and safe havens in tribal areas between Kabul and Islamabad. In Afghanistan, regional terrorist groups have cooperated with the Taliban-based elements on their common goals and mutual interests. These groups include Lashkar-e-Taiba, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Al-Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Islam, Sipah-e-Sahaba, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan-and Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement which pose a strategic threat to the security and stability of Afghanistan. These groups also seek withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan, creating bases and safe havens in northern and north-eastern provinces and using them as a platform for “undermining and toppling” Central Asian “secular” governments. They also pursue the objective of creating “sanctuaries and safe havens” in tribal areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan and along the Durand Line, the 2,430-kilometre long international border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Improving the implementation of counter-terrorism resolutions is crucial, especially the UN Security Council (resolutions). Speed is the essence and at the moment, terror is moving fast. In a scathing attack on Pakistan last month, Afghanistan had said the killing of notorious terrorist leaders, including Osama Bin Laden and Mullah Mansour in “safe havens” in Pakistan, prove that it violated sovereignty of other nations and the county needs political will and not “nuclear deals or F-16s” to take action against terrorists. Elements within the state structure of Pakistan facilitating most of the terrorist groups active in the region had warned that a country using “good and bad terrorists” against each other is “playing with fire”. If history is anything to go by, Afghanistan has served as springboard not only for al-Qaeda and the Taliban but also for Kashmir-focused terrorist groups.
