Less than a week after the outreach visit of the Indian all-party delegation to America to mobilise opinion against Pakistan for sponsoring terrorism, a US general on Tuesday described Islamabad as a “phenomenal partner in the counter-terrorism world” for going after ISIS-Khorasan.

General Michael Kurilla, who commands the US Central Command (Centcom), in his testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, made a case for Washington to have a relationship with both New Delhi and Islamabad, maintaining that it is not an either/or option.

“We have to have a relationship with Pakistan and with India. I do not believe it is a binary switch that we can’t have one with Pakistan if we have a relationship with India. We should look at the merits of the relationship for the positives that it has,’’ Kurilla said, volunteering this opinion after responding to questions.

There was no immediate response from India to this development and the external affairs ministry did not respond to queries on Kurilla’s comments.

“ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K) is perhaps one of the most active in trying to do external plots globally to include against the homeland. Right now what we saw is the Taliban in going after ISIS K — they hate each other — pushed a lot of them into the tribal areas on the Afghan-Pakistan border.

Through a phenomenal partnership with Pakistan, they have gone after ISIS
Khorasan, killing dozens of them.

Through a relationship we have with them providing intelligence, they have captured at least five ISIS Khorasan high value individuals....”

In particular, Kurilla mentioned the capture of Mohammad Sharifullah, better known as “Jafar”, for his role in the Abbey Gate bombing
at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul in August 2021, killing 182 people including 13 US military personnel.

The American general also recalled how he was the first to be informed by the Pakistan army chief, Asim Munir, about the capture and offer to extradite “Jafar” to the US. Munir also wanted the general to inform the secretary of defence and the President.

“So we are seeing Pakistan, with limited intelligence that we are providing them, go after them using their means to do that, and we are seeing an effect on ISIS-K.”