Afghan official says Taliban peace will help in fighting Daesh

Gulf Today Report

Afghanistan's national security adviser said on Saturday that a successful peace process with the Taliban will allow the government to focus its resources on countering the Daesh group and its attacks on soft targets.

Hamdullah Mohib, Afghanistan's national security adviser said, "We do face a lot of threats... so our resources are stretched."

"One of the reasons we're focused on this peace process with the Taliban is that if we were to achieve peace with the Taliban, our security forces will be able to divert their capabilities onto terrorist groups like Daesh and then we can contain them much easier."

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Mohib has attended the Manama Dialogue security conference in the Bahraini capital on Saturday.

Afghanistan is grappling with a surge in violence that has worsened despite landmark peace talks with the Taliban which began in September in Qatar.

The Daesh militant group has claimed a series of assaults on vulnerable targets, including a November attack on Kabul university which saw gunmen detonate grenades and spray automatic fire across the campus.

"Of course those attacks by themselves are quite damaging, they bring a lot of fear to our people, and we are working very hard to prevent them from attacking our cities," he told the media.

"The Taliban wanted to get the maximum advantage at the negotiating table and I think they perhaps were testing the Afghan security forces, maybe also on how far it will go before our allies come to our support," Mohib said.

"It will strain our capabilities and of course it will affect those training and maintenance facilities that are being built," he said, forcing them to speed up plans to make the air force self-sufficient.