Washington, June 20 (IANS) The US should use its leverage with Pakistan to ensure accountability and affirm Afghanistan’s right to be free from cross-border military actions that result in civilian casualties, including children, a report has stated.
Pakistan carried out fresh airstrikes in Afghanistan last week after a month of relative calm, killing at least 13 civilians and injuring 10 others, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). Islamabad confirmed the strikes, asserting that they targeted militant hideouts and killed 26 fighters associated with the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Those claims, however, have not been independently verified, a report in US-based online magazine ‘Responsible Statecraft’ detailed.
Washington should press Islamabad to provide evidence supporting its claims of strikes on militant hideouts, back an independent investigation into reported civilian deaths, and make clear that counterterrorism cooperation cannot serve as a pretext for attacks that kill Afghan civilians, the report noted.
“This is not the first time Islamabad has claimed that its bombs were aimed at the TTP, while offering no evidence. In March, Pakistani strikes hit the Omid drug rehabilitation center in Kabul, where, according to the United Nations, at least 143 people were killed. But these attacks have drawn little condemnation or even attention from the international community, including the United States, which has developed close ties with Pakistan during President Donald Trump’s second term,” it added.
Haji Hafizullah, a resident of Afghanistan’s Khost province, spent the night following the Pakistani airstrikes, alongside his son and other villagers, pulling bodies from the rubble.
“One of the families lost seven children. They were between three and 15 years old. A woman and a man from the same family were also killed. They were all sleeping. They had no link to any group. They were not fighters. They were poor people, simple people,” Responsible Statecraft quoted him as saying.
Responding to Islamabad’s claim that the target was the TTP, Esmatullah, another resident of Khost, told the publication, “Pakistan says it is fighting terrorists; then why did we bury children today? If these children were terrorists, show us their guns. Show us their crime. Their only crime was that they were Afghan, poor, and sleeping near a border Pakistan thinks it can bomb whenever it wants.”
The report noted that Pakistan’s frustration with either the Taliban or the TTP does not entitle it to target villagers in Afghanistan’s Khost, Kunar, or Paktika provinces. It stressed that counterterrorism operations cannot become a “license to kill poor families.”
Calling on the global community to stop treating Afghan deaths as “background noise” Esmatullah further said, “We are not asking the world to fight for us; we are asking the world to say the truth. A child and a mother killed in Khost or Paktika is still a child and a mother. If there are truly human rights and if they really mean something, they must mean something for Afghan people too.”
–IANS
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