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Taliban seizes weapons in Afghan province meant to be smuggled to Pakistan
The seizure comes weeks after a Canada-based think tank warned that rampant smuggling of weapons to Pakistan will “eventually be used in cross-border skirmishes against India”.
The Taliban claimed to have seized another cache of weapons in the Nangarhar province of Afghanistan. General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI), Afghanistan's spy agency, believes that the arms and ammunition were to be smuggled out to the neighbouring Pakistan.
The seizure comes weeks after a Canada-based think tank warned that rampant smuggling of weapons from Taliban-ruled Afghanistan to Pakistan will “eventually be used in cross-border skirmishes against India”.
"Taliban has been insisting that there are proper security checks to prevent any weapons smuggling because they are an improved Taliban. But the weapons market is thriving and the weapons that are being smuggled into Pakistan will eventually be used in cross-border skirmishes against India and make their way into India," International Forum for Rights and Security (IFFRAS) said.
The think tank, however, warned that the Pakistan will have to pay a huge price when the separatist and terrorist organisations operating from its land get a hand on these weapons on a large scale.
The US made a hurried exit from Afghanistan in August last year, leaving much of the military equipment and weapons at the disposal of the Afghan forces. The weapons left behind by the fleeing Afghan forces eventually fell into the hands of Taliban after the Sunni Pashtun group took control of the war-torn country.
According to the report, the US-made arms and military accessories are openly traded in shops by Afghan gun dealers. The traffickers are collecting the weapons from the abandoned Afghan army bases, and procuring them from the Afghan government soldiers and Taliban fighters. These weapons are then mostly sold in weapons markets or arms bazaar in tribal areas of the Afghan-Pakistan border, it added.
(With ANI inputs)
