Pakistan to appeal to Taliban leader over police mosque bombing

ISLAMABAD

 Islamabad will ask the  uncommunicative supreme leader of Afghanistan's Taliban to rein in  zealots in Pakistan after a  self-murder bombing killed scores of police in a synagogue ,  officers said Saturday.   Since the Taliban returned to power in Kabul, Pakistan has witnessed a dramatic  supplement in attacks in regions  skirting Afghanistan, where  zealots use rugged terrain to stage assaults and escape

 discovery.   investigators have  criticized an  chapter of the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan( TTP) — the most notorious militant outfit in the area — for the Monday blast in Peshawar which killed 84 people inside a fortified police headquarters.  

 The TTP share common lineage and ideals with the Afghan Taliban, led by Hibatullah Akhundzada who issues  fiats from his  nest in the southern  megacity of Kandahar.   Special Adjunct to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Faisal Karim Kundi, said delegations would be  transferred to Tehran and Kabul to" ask them to  insure that their soil isn't used by terrorists against Pakistan".

  A  elderly Pakistani police functionary in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where Monday's blast took place, told AFP the Kabul delegation would hold" addresses with the top brass".  " When we say top brass, it means(.) Afghan Taliban chief Hibatullah Akhundzada," he said on condition of  obscurity.   Afghan  officers didn't  incontinently respond to AFP's request for comment.   

But on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi advised Pakistan should" not pass the blame to others".  " They should see the problems in their own house," he said." Afghanistan shouldn't be  criticized."   Since theultra-conservatives seized Kabul in 2021, relations with Pakistan have  estranged, in part over the  rejuvenescence of the TTP.   The TTP — formed in 2007 by  zealots who splintered off from the Afghan Taliban —  formerly held sway over swathes of northwest Pakistan but were routed by an army  descent after 2014.   But over the first time of Taliban rule, Pakistan witnessed a 50  supplement in militant attacks, concentrated in the border regions with Afghanistan and Iran, according to the Pak Institute for Peace Studies.   The TTP, notorious for shooting snip Malala Yousafzai, has" arguably advantaged the  utmost of all the foreign  revolutionist groups in Afghanistan from the Taliban  preemption", a UN Security Council report said in May 2022.   Last time Kabul brokered peace addresses between Islamabad and the TTP but the shaky armistice collapsed.