The Inter‑Services Public Relations (ISPR) has firmly rejected reports that the Afghanistan‑bound operations of United States drones are being launched from Pakistani territory, stressing that no “secret deal” exists allowing such drone launches.
ISPR chief Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, speaking in Islamabad, labelled claims in Afghan and Indian media as “baseless propaganda”. He said that Pakistan has not given permission to the US or any other foreign country to use its soil for strikes inside Afghanistan.
The military spokesman reiterated that Pakistan’s one‑point agenda is to stop terror from Afghan soil. He noted that recent peace talks held in Turkey and Doha must yield action, not headlines. He dismissed the reports of US drone operations as part of a misinformation campaign.
In a related development, Pakistan’s military has also taken retaliatory strikes against militants along the Afghan border, asserting that more than 200 fighters of the Afghan Taliban and other groups were killed in recent operations. Some of those operations were described in the coverage of Pakistan’s broader counter‑terror campaign.
The ISPR also issued a sharp warning to India, accusing it of planning a “false‑flag” operation in deep waters and saying that any provocation from India would trigger a “far stronger” response.
Pakistan’s refusal to publicly acknowledge any cooperation in US drone operations comes amid growing scrutiny of the drone‑war footprint in the region. While historical analyses note that US drones operated along the Pakistan‑Afghanistan border with Pakistani cooperation in earlier years, Islamabad now distances itself from any such arrangement.
Overall, the ISPR statement underscores Pakistan’s stance: its sovereignty and security are non‑negotiable. It insists that when it comes to drone strikes, foreign use of Pakistani territory is not authorised, and claims to the contrary are dismissed as destabilising rhetoric.
