A Pakistani ruling government leader Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has said the Taliban would help the country “liberate” Kashmir from India. In a televised news debate, PTI leader Neelam Irshad Sheikh said: “The Taliban have said they are with us and will help us to [liberating] Kashmir “.
The video clip retweeted by Pakistani journalist and former US ambassador Hussain Haqqani has appeared online and has been recirculated by the ANI news agency.
In the video, the news anchor repeatedly asks Sheikh about the source of his information, even wondering at one point if he read about such a Taliban statement on WhatsApp.
“Ma’am, you realize what you said. You have no idea what you just said. This show will be broadcast around the world; it will also be seen in India, ”the news anchor asks the PTI leader.
However, Sheikh emphasizes his claim that Pakistan has the strength of its army and the leadership of Prime Minister Imran Khan to help them “liberate Kashmir from India”.
Sheikh further said that the way Pakistan supported the Taliban when they were being persecuted in Afghanistan, the militants said they would return the favor by helping Pakistan to “turn Kashmir into a part of their country.”
His statements come at a time when Pakistan has been consistently accused of inciting the Taliban in Afghanistan, to the point of providing them with medical aid, weapons and logistics.
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Shortly after taking the capital of Afghanistan, Kabul, and declaring the government over the country after nearly 20 years, a Taliban official had described Kashmir as a “bilateral and internal matter” and said the group was unlikely to center in the territory of the Indian Union.
Recently another online video appeared showing students from the radical Jamia Hafsa seminary in the Pakistani capital Islamabad, celebrating the triumph of the insurgents in Afghanistan by reciting poems and displaying the group’s flags.
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The head of the seminary hailed the students for their support of the Taliban and said he wants the Islamic emirate to expand beyond Afghan borders. However, the Islamabad administration claimed that they had removed the Taliban flags from the seminary building.
Earlier, Pakistani Prime Minister Khan had also indirectly compared the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan saying that the “shackles of slavery” have been broken in the war-torn nation.