Pak ‘jihadis’ join Taliban ranks, return as dead bodies

ISLAMABAD: The American, Pakistani and the Afghan leadership has been warning of a possible civil war in the coming weeks and months but many “jihadis” from Pakistan have already started spilling into Afghanistan and several of them have returned as dead bodies.
The Taliban advances following the announcement of the withdrawal of the US and Nato troops from the war-ravaged country had prompted many students from Pakistani religious seminaries to join the ranks of militants, described by their mentors as ‘jihad’. The clerics in various parts of the country are also soliciting support for the Afghan Taliban and even calling for donations.
While Islamabad has been denying that “jihadis” from Pakistan are going to Afghanistan, the country has been receiving dead bodies of its citizens from across the border on the Chaman-Spin Boldak and Torkhum border crossings.
According to locals in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in the northwest and Balochistan in the southwest, dozens of Pakistanis have been killed in Afghanistan in the past few months while fighting alongside the Taliban against the Afghan forces. Hundreds of people, locals said, had attended the funerals of the Pakistani fighters in various parts of the two provinces.
In mid-July, 22 years old Adul Rasheed was laid to rest in the suburbs of Peshawar city in the northwest. Rasheed, according to his family members, had gone to Afghanistan in May for ‘jihad’ and was recently killed in the Nangrahar province. His body was brought into the country through Torkhum border crossing. Hundreds of people had participated in his funeral and had congratulated the family for sacrificing his life in the way of God.
Rasheed’s cause has been described by his uncle Maroof Khan as a source of inspiration for other young Pakistani jihadis fighting in Afghanistan. “Many of his young friends want to be martyred like him,” he said.
In Balochistan, funerals and prayers are frequently held in the Pashtun-speaking areas along the border with Afghanistan upon the arrival of dead bodies of local and Afghan militants. “Funerals are held. The Taliban make speeches at funerals and congratulate families for their martyrs,” said a resident of the Panjpai town in Balochistan.
“Recently, a funeral prayer was held for the son of a tribal leader who was killed while fighting alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan,” he said, adding that his father, also a jihadi, had returned to his hometown from the “holy war” on Eid.
In videos shared on social media, hundreds of people took part in the funeral where the Taliban’s white flags were displayed.
Many locals and witnesses in Quetta and other parts of Balochistan claimed that there had been an increased pro-Taliban activity in their areas.
Pakistan’s interior minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed had admitted that the dead bodies arriving to the country were of the Afghan Taliban as families of many of them reside in Pakistan. According to Rasheed, sometimes their dead bodies arrive, and sometimes they come here to hospitals to get medical treatments.
Government officials, however, reject reports about the pro-Taliban rallies and donations as unfounded. “The allegations are baseless. No such thing is happening,” Zahid Hafeez Chuadhary, Pakistan’s foreign office spokesperson, recently told media.