KABUL - Outspoken parliamentarian Ramazan Bashardost and Defence Minister Bismillah Mohammadi on Wednesday dubbed each other a killer and an enemy’s agent.
The exchange of barbs came during the Wolesi Jirga session, where interior and defence ministers, as well as the intelligence chief, were summoned to brief lawmakers on the current wave of insecurity in the country.
Interior Minister Omar Daudzai told the lower house the security forces were capable of dealing with a possible crisis resulting from the current presidential election deadlock.
He said the presidential runners were close to reaching a political deal. “Our politicians how now become mature. They do trade warnings but avoid pushing the country into a crisis. Both love their homeland.”
If a crisis erupted due to the electoral problem, the minister said, the security forces would be able to control the situation. “If our security forces had been partial, a new president would have taken over by now,” he remarked.
Daudzai accused Pakistan of firing 4,421 rockets into Afghanistan this year, killing 16 civilians. But the Afghan forces were doing their bit to give the aggressor a tit-for-tat response, he said.
About the trenches Pakistani forces have started digging along the Durand Line with Afghanistan in Balochistan province, Daudzai said the neighboring country had no legal right to do so. “Pakistan has long been trying to declare the Durand Line as an international border through such tactics,” he said, adding that a presidential committee was investigating the matter.
He claimed the Punjabi Taliban and the Lashkar-e-Tayaba (LeT) militant outfit as extended organs of the Pakistani security establishment received direct aid and dictation from the country’s intelligence service, the ISI.
The interior minister further said some former militants released from the Bagram Prison for good conduct had promised not to return to the battlefield. “But these thankless men turned their guns on us again,” he regretted.
The minister also clarified security forces were not allowed to use heavy weapons against militants in residential areas. Daudzai informed the house that Afghan forces would be given special training soon to conduct night raids against militants.
About aerial firing during the Martyrs Week observance, the interior minister said it proved all de-weaponisation campaigns in the past had failed.
National Directorate of Security (NDS) Deputy Chief Hassamuddin Hassan told lawmakers the Taliban’s Khyber Offensive this year did not succeeded in achieving the desired results despite being supported by foreign militants.
“They have asked all their shadow governors and district chiefs to capture their respective areas, but they failed to do so,” he added.
Later, MP from Kabul Ramazan Bashardost, referring to reports in recent years, said Afghan and foreign forces and Taliban had been killing civilians.
He also cited the Quranic verse that killing one innocent individual means the murder of all humanity. He said if the security personnel, led by the defence minister, had killed civilians, they had murdered all mankind.
The French-educated legislator asked the house to issue orders for “hanging the defence minister for killing innocent people”. He went on to liken Mohammadi to Taliban’s supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
As Bashardost prepared to walk out of the assembly, the minister told him: “You are Mullah Omar. Don’t go out. Hear my reply…Being a foreign spy, you are insulting the Afghan National Army.”
The Afghan soldiers were rendering the ultimate sacrifice in the war on terror, but Bashardost branded them as killers, the minister regretted. He claimed the MP had no knowledge of Islam.
The testy exchanges prompted Speaker Abdul Rauf Ibrahim to intervene, saying no one reserved to the right to insult anyone. “Neither a minister nor an MP has such a right,” the speaker observed. (Pajhwok)