Taliban hold turf, reject Pakistan acquisitive overtures

Kabul [Afghanistan], December 28 (ANI): Taliban is holding their turf and fighting back Pakistan‘s moves to use its currency for trade and preparing to dovetail the Afghan economy with its own has become a major irritant between Islamabad and Kabul, Al Arabiya reported.

As the Taliban continues to fight against diplomatic isolation and a collapsing economy, the outfit is rejecting acquisitive overtures from Pakistan, their biggest facilitator.

Since the Taliban takeover of Kabul in mid-August, the outfit is still denied recognition across the globe. They are fighting back Pakistan‘s moves to use its currency at the cost of the Afghani for trade. The Pakistani effort at dominating the currency exchange and preparing to dovetail the Afghan economy with its own has become another major irritant, Al Arabiya reported.

Since last month, small traders and locals in Afghanistan‘s border provinces with Pakistan have begun to use the Pakistani rupee instead of the Afghani, a mandatory exchange currency under the Taliban dispensation. Equally aggressive has been their fightback on the border by resisting Pakistan‘s continued attempts to fence it. The fence was uprooted in Nangarhar province even as it was being laid by the Pakistani authorities, Al Arabiya reported.

It further reported that the Taliban and Pakistani forces came face-to-face over the border incident and the situation remains tense.

This happened, significantly in diplomatic terms, on December 19, the day Pakistan was hosting a meeting of the OIC Foreign Ministers to discuss an urgent course to garner global humanitarian relief for the Afghan people. This was the first reported border incident marking the resumption of old tensions, Al Arabiya reported.

The media outlet reported that the message to Islamabad was that whatever its current problems, Kabul will not allow fencing, even if it on the Pakistani side, because that amounts to accepting the British-era Durand Line as the international border.

Pakistan has completed 90 percent of the fencing along the 2,600-kilometer border and this was a serious issue between Islamabad and the previous government in Kabul. There were numerous clashes. Successive Afghan governments have termed any curbs on the border like the fence as ‘illegal’, Al Arabiya reported. (ANI)