FAISALABAD: President Faisalabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry (FCCI) Farooq Yousaf Sheikh condemned the repeated cross-border attacks from Afghanistan and continuation of terrorism inside Pakistan through hybrid and proxy warfare and termed it as intolerable, demanding concrete and decisive measures to eliminate the menace once for all.
Welcoming Pakistan’s successful military response to the recent Afghan aggression, he said that persistence of such hostile actions had made it imperative to adopt firm strategies to safeguard national security and ensure lasting peace in the region.
He alleged that Afghanistan had effectively turned into a colony of India, from where suicide attackers were being dispatched to orchestrate bloodshed in Pakistan.
Expressing grave concern, he said that terrorists were targeting mosques and educational institutions, which reflected their intent to push the region back into the Stone Age.
Such acts of terrorism clearly demonstrated that the perpetrators were not only devoid of religious and moral values but also pursuing a specific agenda of chaos for destabilizing Afghanistan as well as Pakistan to obstruct the development process, he added.
Farooq Yousaf Sheikh lauded the successes achieved under the leadership of Field Marshal Hafiz Asim Munir on both eastern and western borders and assured that the entire nation stood shoulder to shoulder with its armed forces to identify and eliminate terrorists and their facilitators.
He observed that an unstable Afghanistan was not only creating hardships for the Afghan people but was also posing serious threats to regional peace.
He urged the international community particularly Islamic countries to use their influence over the Afghan government to stop cross-border infiltration and prevent the use of its territory against neighboring states as nearly two dozen different terrorist groups had taken sanctuary in Afghanistan.
The business community and citizens of Faisalabad like traders across the country fully supported the Pak armed forces to ensure sustainable peace and stability in the region, he added.
