Atmar: peace efforts, counterterrorism goes alongside

National Security Advisor Haneef Atmar on Wednesday during Joint Coordination and Monitoring Board (JCMB) session said that peace and counter terrorism efforts will be followed side by side across the country.
“As we are following the peace strategy with Afghan networks, we will pursue counter terrorism strategy with foreign networks,” said Atmar.

He said that the army will be a hold force to protect the areas that we clear, and the Special Forces will be a clear force.

We strongly believe our forces and they will only be able to deliver on this mission if we undertake serious reform efforts, he added.

He said that “Terrorist is posing a serious threat to the world community, not only to us, so we have a common enemy, common threat and a common purpose.

In addition to the Afghan networks, such as the Taliban and Haqqani, we are fighting three other categories of terrorist, he noted.

He highlighted that accordance to the enemy categories first is ‘international global’ terrorist network Al Qaeda and ISIS, secondly ‘regional terrorist’ Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) and the third category is ‘Pakistan terrorist’ TTP and LET.

He elaborated that the terrorist targeted four things this year, first to gain territory, second destructing the government and communication system, third destructing election and forth spill over into central Asia and other neighbors of Afghanistan.

He elucidated that the fight we do is not just on behalf of Afghanistan, but it is a defense measure on behalf of the region and the global community.

It is true that there is an increase in the brink of violence in the country, but it hasn’t brought them (enemies) any significant territorial gains, so this is an indication that the South Asia Strategy is working, he stated.