Taliban maintains close ties with terror groups: Afghanistan NDS chief
Kabul/IBNS: The head of Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security (NDS) has said Taliban’s relations with other terrorist groups 'continue to be close and mutually beneficial which is against the spirit of the peace agreement the group had signed with the United States'.
“The Taliban’s leadership is still thinking of a comeback to power by military means. They do not value things like mutual tolerance and peace,” the NDS chief Ahmad Zia Saraj told Afghan senators during a briefing about the security situations of the country on Sunday as quoted by Tolo News.
Acting Minister of Interior Massoud Andarabi said Taliban will fail to win on battlefield.
“We will prevent the Taliban’s wish to settle the problem through military means,” Andarabi was quoted as saying by the news portal.
According to NDS chief Saraj, since March the Taliban has conducted over 220 attacks and the group still has ties with terror groups.
Officials from the Afghan Ministry of Defense (MoD) said that Pakistan and Iran are trying to disrupt the security situations in Afghanistan, Tolo News reported.
“There is nothing to keep in secrect, it's a crystal-clear fact that Pakistan kills us on a daily basis,” general Yasin Zia, the deputy Minister of Defense told the news portal.
After nearly 19 years of hostilities, the United States signed a peace deal with Taliban which came after months of negotiations between the representatives of the two sides in Doha in February.
The peace deal was signed by US peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and Mullah Brother of the Taliban. The deal requires the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners by the start of the talks, in a prisoner exchange for 1,000 government soldiers held by the Taliban. However, on April 7, 2020 the Taliban officially withdrew from prisoner swap talks, which had been taking place in Kabul starting 30 March 2020 and only resulted in the release of 100 Taliban prisoners on 8 April 2020.
The signing of the peace agreement is suppose to end the longest war of US. The deal was signed in the presence of the leaders of Pakistan, Qatar, Turkey India, Indonesia, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, among others. Qatar had invited 30 countries to witness the signing of the historic peace agreement.
The US had wanted Taliban to agree on a ceasefire before signing the peace deal and it finally happened when the Islamist outfit asked its fighters to refrain from launching new attacks.
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