Last week, the Pakistan army expressed serious concerns about militants allegedly finding “safe havens” in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Senior Pakistani politicians, including the country’s defence minister have expressed concern about the Taliban’s statement on Saturday regarding the Doha Agreement, reports said.

In an interview with BBC Pashto, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid responded to the defence minister’s remarks about Afghanistan not fulfilling its obligations under the deal by stating that the peace accord was not signed with Islamabad but the United States.

In February 2020, under the former Donald Trump administration, the United States and the Taliban signed the US–Taliban deal (or the Doha Agreement) in Qatar that set 1 May 2021 as the deadline for the complete withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan.

However, the pull out was on the condition that the Taliban halts its support for terrorist organisations. The deadline was later revised to 11 September by President Biden without conditions, before changing it to 31 August following the Taliban takeover of Kabul.

Earlier, Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said he was deeply concerned about the “safe havens” and freedom of action that Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an umbrella organisation of various Islamist armed militant groups operating along the Afghan–Pakistani border, have in Afghanistan.

Speaking to BBC Pashto, the Taliban official assured that Afghanistan was not allowing its soil to be used for attacks in Pakistan, as the ruling group considers it “a Muslim and brother country.”

“There is no TTP in Afghanistan. If Pakistan has any evidence, it should share it with us. We will consider it and take action. Pakistan blames us for its own failure in maintenance of law and order situation internally,” Mujahid said, as quoted by reports.

Increasing attacks

Pakistan has been facing a significant increase in terrorism across the nation, and authorities there believe the TTP is responsible for these attacks despite assurances from their supporters that they will control the militant group.

Last week, the Pakistan’s army expressed serious concerns about militants finding safe havens in neighbouring Afghanistan. They issued a warning of an “effective response” after twelve soldiers were killed in two attacks.

The army stated it is troubled by the safe havens and freedom of action enjoyed by the TTP in Afghanistan and emphasised that such attacks are unacceptable.

In response to Mujahid’s statement, veteran politician and senior PPP leader Farhatullah Babar found it “disturbing.”

“Does it mean the Doha agreement binds the Taliban to rein in only some militants, not all?” Babar interrogated in a tweet.

After conducting multiple operations against militant areas in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, the Pakistan army now faces the resurgence of the TTP in Balochistan, reports detailed. The TTP has become active in this region following multiple attacks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Since the termination of a ceasefire agreement with the government in late 2022, the militant group has escalated its attacks. One notable incident was the bombing of a mosque in Peshawar earlier this year, which resulted in the death of over 100 people.

The attack was one of the worst to hit Pakistan in recent years.

The Doha Agreement, however, is seen as an enormous success that delivered Afghanistan a degree of peace and security that it had not known in the previous 50 years, according to an expert.

“All of Afghanistan’s neighbours, including Pakistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, as well as China and Russia, endorsed the deal at the time it was signed,” Dr Farhan Chak, Associate Professor of Political Science at Qatar University told Doha News in April.

The Organisation of Islamic Countries and the United Nations Security Council both unanimously endorsed it, he added.

“Of course, this is not to say that significant challenges do not remain. Certainly, there are serious issues of inclusion, women’s rights and the role of ethnic minorities that need to be thoughtfully addressed. At the moment, though, the criticism of the Doha Agreement has little to do with Afghanistan and its ongoing challenges, and much more to do with geopolitics,” Chak told Doha News.

‘Unwise criticism’

Separately, the Doha deal had been brought under fire on multiple occasions with former US officials sharing their negative takes on the agreement last year.

In an oped penned by David Petraeus in August 2022, the former head of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan and former head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) dubbed it one of the ‘worst diplomatic deals’, which he said was negotiated “without the elected Afghan government at the table.”

“We acquiesced to Taliban demands because the resulting agreement gave us, in the narrowest sense possible, what we wanted: a defined timeline for our departure and a Taliban promise not to attack our forces (which was already quite difficult to do as, by that point, American soldiers were seldom on the front lines) in the interim,” Petraeus wrote in The Atlantic.

Chiming in on the issue, Chak said”Afghans have always felt, rightfully so, that their homeland has been a battlefield for foreign powers.

“Yet, local power-brokers have benefitted from this outside interference for personal gains, even while impoverishing the nation,” he told Doha News.

“Even now, growing criticism of the Doha Agreement in the US or Pakistan is symptomatic of a greater rivalry between political contenders – whether local or global, rather than on the content of the Doha Agreement or the tremendous work that Doha has done to facilitate peace.”

On that note, former National Security Advisor (NSA) John Bolton referred to the Doha Agreement in August same year as the biggest mistake, saying that the Taliban had broken its promises to the Afghan people and that many foreign fighters had returned to Afghanistan.

“I think history has proven in the fact that it was a terrible agreement. The objective the Taliban wanted was America, NATO, out of Afghanistan, everything else was secondary,” Bolton stated in an interview with TOLOnews.

The Doha agreement, Chak argued, has brought about what the vast majority of Afghans have yearned for after half a century.

“It is also the responsibility of the international community to support the people of Afghanistan and not abandon its people. Admittedly, much more needs to be done, but unraveling or discrediting the achievements of the Doha Agreement is unwise and unnecessary,” Chak told Doha News.