By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s top military spokesman said on Wednesday that a recent airstrike in Kabul struck an ammunition and drone storage facility used by the Afghan Taliban, not the civilian drug rehabilitation center claimed by Afghan officials, as part of an escalating campaign against terrorism emanating from across the border.
Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, director general of the Inter-Services Public Relations, made the remarks during an appearance on a private television channel, laying out in granular detail the rationale for Operation Ghazab lil-Haq, launched last month against the Afghan Taliban. He said the operation is not as an isolated incursion but a necessary response in Pakistan’s long-running fight against terrorism, which he said has been “imposed upon Pakistan by terrorists and their sponsors.”
Chaudhry directly accused India of orchestrating much of the violence, using Afghanistan as a “base of operations” and supplying the Taliban regime with rudimentary drones that have been intercepted near Pakistani cities, including Islamabad. “There is no drone manufacturing site in Afghanistan,” he said, adding that the nexus between India’s Research and Analysis Wing and the Taliban amounts to a “master terror proxy” arrangement.
The spokesman emphasised that Pakistan harbors no animosity toward ordinary Afghans, whom he described as oppressed by the Taliban regime. “We have no issues with our Afghan brothers and sisters, absolutely not,” Chaudhry said. “They are themselves oppressed by the Afghan Taliban regime.”
He framed the current operation as reactive. Pakistan first struck multiple terrorist hideouts along the porous border, targeting the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) rather than Afghan civilians, he said. In retaliation, the Afghan Taliban hit 53 locations inside Pakistan, including border posts. Pakistan then responded with airstrikes on 81 sites in Afghanistan, focusing on terrorist support infrastructure — corps and brigade headquarters, ammunition dumps, storage facilities, hangars and tunnels — that enable attacks on Pakistani soil.
The Kabul strike, Chaudhry said, was among those precision operations. “Our intelligence was correct; we hit an ammunition storage site, so the ammunition exploded,” he explained. Video footage released publicly shows secondary detonations, with fireballs and explosions lasting for some time as old Russian Scud missiles, ammunition, drones and other equipment detonated, he said. Precision-guided munitions were used throughout to minimize collateral damage, in contrast to less accurate general-purpose bombs.
Afghan officials have countered that the strike hit “Omid Camp,” a drug treatment facility, claiming significant casualties. Chaudhry dismissed those assertions as lacking credibility. “There is no credibility to their claims; the world knows it, we know it. They make claims and then delete them. They are discredited and liars,” he said.
Chaudhry questioned the plausibility of a drug rehabilitation center operating adjacent to an ammunition depot. “Has anyone asked how someone can set up a drug rehabilitation centre around an ammunition depot where you store weapons?” he asked. The site, Chaudhry asserted, was in fact a “military containerised structure” likely used for training suicide bombers — many of whom are drug addicts, according to patterns observed in past attacks — or for hiding terrorists and housing Taliban fighters. “I don’t know what was in there. That was not our target,” he added, “but if they claim that there were drug addicts at the site, then this is an old habit of theirs.”
Chaudhry cited specific recent attacks inside Pakistan to illustrate the cross-border threat. A suicide bombing at an imambargah in Islamabad’s Tarlai area during Friday prayers killed innocent worshippers and children; the attacker came from Afghanistan, he said. In an assault on the Wana Cadet College, five terrorists were killed — all Afghan nationals. Terrorist leaders such as Noor Wali Mehsud, Bashir Zeb and Gul Bahadur are being sheltered on Afghan territory, he added, often in government buildings.
The spokesman rejected any notion that Pakistan initiated conflict. “We have not imposed any war upon Afghanistan; the war on terror has been imposed on us.” He noted that, according to United Nations reporting, 22 terrorist organizations are operating in Afghanistan, which he described as “a centre for all of the world’s terrorists” and “a can of worms” that Pakistan has sought to contain. The country is not a normal state, Chaudhry argued, but “a territory captured by the Afghan Taliban, which is a terrorist organisation.”
Chaudhry revealed that the Taliban regime maintains ties with high-profile figures, including Hamza bin Laden, a son of Osama bin Laden. “The Afghan Taliban regime is a terrorist organisation that has taken control of the country, and this is what the United Nations is also saying. They are in contact with his son Hamza and have asked him to come to Afghanistan.”
On the drone threat, Chaudhry said Pakistan’s air force and army air defense units have downed all incoming drones through a combination of “hard and soft kills.” The character of warfare has shifted to “drone warfare and non-contact warfare,” he observed, citing conflicts in the Middle East where even sophisticated air defenses have been challenged.
Pakistan’s endgame remains straightforward, he stated: Afghanistan must cease serving as a launchpad for terrorism inside Pakistan. “The choice has to be made by the Afghan Taliban regime — is the TTP more important to them or Pakistan? Is terrorism more important to them than peace?” he said. “Our choice is very clear: it’s Pakistan, first and last.”
Talks between Islamabad and Kabul have repeatedly broken down, Chaudhry explained, because the Afghan side is “not ready to let go of terrorism.” Pakistan has demanded a verifiable mechanism to ensure no further attacks, but negotiations cannot proceed while the Taliban continues recruitment, training and cross-border operations. “We have a very just demand and all of our friends acknowledge it: that this cannot happen, where you (Kabul) say ‘we will talk’ but at the same time send terrorists to our country,” he said. “These two things cannot go together.”
He added that the Taliban regime’s only outputs are “terrorism and drugs,” which are intertwined in what he called a “war economy” that has become a way of life.Domestically, Pakistan continues aggressive counterterrorism efforts, with more than 200 operations conducted daily, leading to a decline in cross-border smuggling and militant activity, Chaudhry noted. The military’s information ministry has routinely released video evidence of strikes to demonstrate targeting of terrorist infrastructure.
The spokesman’s comments follow overnight airstrikes in Kabul and Nangarhar province and come a day after Information Minister Attaullah Tarar publicly identified an ammunition storage facility as among the targets in the Afghan capital.
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