A leader of Pakistan’s ruling party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has said that the Taliban would help the country in ‘liberating’ Kashmir from India.
Neelam Irshad Sheikh was speaking on a TV news debate when she said, “Taliban have said that they are with us and they will help us in [liberating] Kashmir.”
The clip of the video that was retweeted by Pakistani journalist and former ambassador to US, Hussain Haqqani, has surfaced online and was recirculated by news agency ANI.
However, Sheikh emphasises on her statement that Pakistan has the strength of its Army as well as the leadership of Prime Minister Imran Khan to help them “free Kashmir from India”.
Sheikh further said that the way Pakistan supported the Taliban when the latter was being hounded in Afghanistan, the militants said they would return the favour by helping Pakistan “make Kashmir a part of its country.”
Her remarks come at a time when Pakistan has consistently been blamed for fostering the Taliban in Afghanistan, to the point of providing them with medical aids, weapons and logistics.
Soon after taking over Afghanistan’s capital city Kabul and declaring rule over the country after nearly 20 years, a Taliban official had termed Kashmir to be a “bilateral and internal matter” and stated that the group is unlikely to focus on the Indian Union territory.