Pakistan at a United Nations Security Council briefing characterized the rapidly deteriorating security environment in the Sahel and West Africa as ‘deeply alarming’? calling for urgent collective action to counter the growing terrorist threat in the region.
According to an official information today, Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, stated that the international community is confronting a ‘critical counter-terrorism inflection point,’ which he defined by the exploitation of regional fragmentation and systemic vulnerabilities by proliferating extremist groups.
Highlighting his country’s own experience, the ambassador noted Pakistan’s significant contributions and unparalleled sacrifices in the global fight against terrorism. He said that as a frontline state, the nation has paid a heavy price, losing more than eighty thousand lives and suffering economic losses amounting to billions of dollars.
The envoy asserted that Pakistan”s pivotal role in dismantling Al-Qaeda demonstrates a level of counter-terrorism expertise that few countries possess. He added that despite these efforts, Pakistan continues to face threats from militant organizations allegedly supported by its neighbor.
To address the crisis in Africa, Ambassador Ahmad advanced a coherent framework of priority measures. The proposal begins with the restoration of trust and collective security arrangements among West African and Sahelian states to effectively confront cross-border terrorist networks.
He further reaffirmed that robust national capacities to combat the technological and financial enablers of terrorism are indispensable for achieving enduring peace. These efforts, he noted, must be combined with initiatives to remedy the structural drivers of instability in the region.
Ambassador Asim Iftikhar affirmed that Pakistan will remain a committed partner in advancing that shared global responsibility.