Ahmad Zia Saraj, the acting head of the national directorate of security (NDS), said Monday that because the Taliban has active and secure strongholds in Pakistani cities, the group has been able to intensify the conflict in Afghanistan.

Saraj said this was enabling the Taliban to continue a proxy war.

Saraj stressed that the region’s intelligence policy towards Afghanistan has not changed and that regional countries are trying to achieve a system that the Taliban want.

“Taliban safe havens in Quetta, Karachi and Peshawar are safely plotting every day to challenge us, and in their plans our people are killed, and if the Taliban leadership did not have safe places in these cities they [Taliban] would be facing a bad fate,” Saraj said.

Meanwhile, the acting NDS chief stressed that the Taliban had not cut contact with al-Qaeda and that many terrorist groups were colluding with the group to pursue one goal – which is to destabilize Afghanistan and kill people.

“The Taliban’s relationship with foreign terrorists continues on a regular basis, and terrorist groups are using each other’s capabilities, which has led to an increase in the conflict, and these groups are buying and selling suicide bombers, and all groups are pursuing the same goal, killing people, destroying values and establishing a system,” Saraj added.

Saraj also said that the Taliban does not believe in the peace process.

“If the Taliban was committed to peace, we should have seen results from the talks, and it can be seen that they are not interested in peace and they only want a regime according to their wishes, and if they were committed, they would not increase the violence,” Saraj said.

However, the NDS emphasizes that the only way to reduce the level of violence in Afghanistan is to create and cooperate on a “real” regional consensus basis.

He said conflict of interest among regional countries has resulted in a more widespread war in Afghanistan.