Pakistan wants global drive to block illicit arms flows to terrorist groups TTP, BLA in Afghanistan

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A Pakistani diplomat has called for concerted efforts to intercept clandestine flows of modern and sophisticated weapons that support UN-sanctioned armed groups such as Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) and its Majeed Brigade which he said use safe havens in Afghanistan to launch deadly cross-border attacks inside Pakistan.

“Terrorist armed groups are in possession of billions worth of illicit arms abandoned in Afghanistan,” Syed Atif Raza, a counsellor at the Pakistan Mission to the UN, told an Arria-Formua meeting of the UN Security Council, convened by Sierra Leone.

This format of the Council’s meeting is named after a former Venezuelan ambassador to the UN, Diego Arriva. It is a consultation process which affords members of the UNSC the opportunity to hear persons in an informal setting.

Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have been strained due to frequent border skirmishes and Islamabad had been repeatedly demanding that Kabul take action against the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) for using Afghan soil to launch attacks in Pakistan. Kabul denied the allegations.

Speaking in a debate on on ‘Small Arms and Light Weapons Management in UN Sanctions Regimes’, the Pakistani delegate said such armament was being used by TTP and BLA terrorists in violence against civilians and armed forces of Pakistan.

“These terrorist entities also receive external support and financing from our principal adversary,” Counsellor Raza said in an obvious reference to India.

“We call upon our international partners to recover the vast stockpile of abandoned weapons, prevent their access to armed terrorist groups and take measures to close this thriving black market of illicit arms.”

The misuse and illicit flow of small arms and light weapons aggravates conflicts, threatens socio-economic progress and subverts peace and security, he said, pointing out that they have become instruments of choice for state and non-state actors.

He said that these concerns were further compounded with increasing sophistication of illicit arms and access to modernised weapons at the disposal of illegal armed groups often operating across national boundaries.

We know that non-state actors do not have many of the capabilities to manufacture advanced illicit arms, thus raising questions of culpability of certain state actors in these nefarious activities,“ the Pakistani delegate added.

Earlier this year, UN Ambassador Munir Akram asserted, during the UN Security Council (UNSC) briefing on Afghanistan, that the Kabul authorities had “failed to address the threat posed to the region and beyond by other terrorist groups, such as Al-Qaeda, the TTP and Baloch terrorists, including the BLA (so-called Balochistan Liberation Army) and the Majeed Brigade, which are present in Afghanistan”.

Foreign Office spokesman Shafqat Ali Khan, in a statement in January, also pointed towards the presence of advanced US weapons in Afghanistan following the August 2021 withdrawal which have been used by the “terrorist organisations, including the TTP, to carry out terrorist attacks in Pakistan”.