The Trump administration should “shake things up” and hit terrorist groups inside Pakistan, a top former American diplomat has said, identifying the Taliban sanctuaries in the country as a “big problem” for Afghanistan.
The remarks by Zalmay Khalilzad, who served as the US ambassador to the United Nations and Afghanistan in the Bush administration, came as the US dropped a massive bomb — the largest non-nuclear bomb ever used by Americans in a conflict — near the Pakistan border in Afghanistan’s Nanagarh province.
The US said the bomb targeted a tunnel complex of Islamic State-Khorasan, a regional affiliate of the terror group.
Khalilzad said the terrorist sanctuaries inside Pakistan “should not be accepted as (just) sanctuaries”.
The US and NATO forces were being attacked by terrorists hiding in those sanctuaries and “if we are attacked from those places... They would be legitimate targets for a response,” Khalilzad said during a discussion at the Hudson Institute, an American think tank, in Washington on Thursday.
Khalilzad, who had hosted Donald Trump for his first foreign policy speech during his presidential campaign, said, “Perhaps we have to do something to shake things up.”