Kaleem Mubashir
The US is increasingly using the military option to achieve political end of bringing the Afghan Taliban to the negotiating Table. Increased military operations and bombing have resulted into the record number of Afghan civilian casualties. The Afghan Taliban have so far rejected all efforts meant for any dialogue and refuted such reports as proxy effort against their resolve. Regional countries including Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan always emphasize a dialogue based solution to end the Afghan miseries. However, the US approach on the issue is self-conflicting and confusing. Towing the line, Afghanistan also at times contradicts her own peace efforts. Apparently, the US wants a dialogue for a political settlement but practically trying to push the Afghan Taliban through military option. Such an option could not subdue the Taliban in past with over 140,000, US led international troops. Analysts wonder how this approach could work with demoralizing state of Afghan and foreign forces. Hence ,there is a dire need of adopting a political path by all the stakeholders for a peaceful and long lasting resolution of the Afghan conflict. The political and security developments in Afghanistan is undoubtedly going through a delicate part of the history. The ever changing process of political, security and economic scenarios, would broadly whittle out the fortune of Afghanistan. Its optimistic progression would play an imperative function in the future course of a peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan. However, there is an inherent problem while achieving such a wishful destiny for Afghanistan, as every stakeholder in Afghanistan is desirous of charging the chariot of interests according to its own goals without realizing to achieve a peace for making this world a peaceful place. Broadly, it has been forgotten that the regional and global peace would be at stake ,if the security situation in Afghanistan further deteriorates. Kabul has witnessed most devastating attacks in last couple of months. As per the Indian script ,the Afghan government never departed from falsely alleging Pakistan for the attacks. Pakistani authorities have always condemned the terrorist attacks and rejected the Afghan charges as baseless. Rationally thinking, there is always a need for “ credible investigation” into every attack, rather than jumping into immediate false conclusions.
Afghan government has done very little effort yet to bring the Afghan Taliban to peace dialogue. In the back drop of Afghan President Dr Ashraf Ghani’s offer to mainstreaming of Taliban in the political system of the country and indications for renewed re-engagements with Pakistan, some hopes for resolving the Afghan quagmire have resurfaced. Statement of the US Secretary of Defence during his earlier visit to Kabul, are also seen in the similar light. Similarly, Pakistan has been consistently stressing the early resolution of Afghan conflict through a political settlement.
Pakistan has been doing a lot in Afghanistan to build an honest gesture of brotherhood and keeping in view the same sprit ,it has never propagated the hundred of projects which got completed in Afghanistan. Just for an instance, recently as a token of love and commitment to rebuild Afghanistan, on 25 Mar 2018 Pakistan handed over state of the art medical equipment for Nishter Kidney Centre Jalalabad to Governor of Jalalabad. Pakistan provided complete medical equipment, worth US $ 5 million to the hospital. In addition, around 75 doctors & technicians were trained in PIMS Hospital Islamabad last year, they would offer a great help for Afghanistan in running this hospital. Besides, Pakistan also providing specialized training to another batch of more than fourth Afghan doctors and technicians. The Afghan Governor during briefing to media thanked the Pakistan government for the donation and requested for more financial assistance in other projects. He stated that the said project is mile stone for enhancing bilateral relation among the two brotherly countries.
On Afghan prolonged conflict, international community needs to put pressure on US for a peaceful and political settlement of Afghanistan ,keeping the logic that if US led military alliance of 46 countries could not stem the tide of insurgency after spending almost one trillion dollars over a period of 16 years, then how and why they could expect from Pakistan winning a war in Afghanistan for them. Pakistan has already suffered enormously in fighting the terrorists and helping US in her so called war on terror, but it never got the real appreciation of her sacrifices. With regard to Pakistan, Trump had adopted a threatening posture using queer tweets and frequent “do more” mantra to supplicate strategic “coup de foudre” with India. As the conflict in Afghanistan drags on, Trump has increased the number of US troops to 14,000 and cut off aid to Pakistan if it does not do more to support the US plan meant for Afghanistan. It is quite strange that Pakistan’s contribution in WoT and successes in ongoing op “Radd-u-Fassad” are acknowledged by the American Military Commanders in Afghanistan, however, they frequently use the “do more” phrase. President Trump’s tweet on the eve of the new year followed by “do more” rhetoric, indicate that America leadership is unwilling to lose Pakistan strangulating approach in near future. Unfortunately, media in Pakistan always seems ready to highlight non issues , in this regard media should come forward and support Pakistan’s position on Afghanistan, unfortunately some quarters would remain biased and play on tunes of their foreign sponsors; there is a need to build a strong national narrative and convey to international community that Pakistan should not be treated as a escape goat and whipping boy for failure of US policy in Afghanistan.
