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| Can Pakistan be trusted on Afghanistan? | |
By Farooq Ganderbali
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani spent a year in Pakistan doing fieldwork on his Fulbright scholarship on Madrassas’’ in the mid-eighties. Would that have influenced him enough to be singing paens about Islamabad after becoming President? Mending fences with Pakistan is one thing, but jumping in bed with the devil is another matter altogether.
President Ghani needs to be gently reminded that Pakistan created the Taliban, who today stand to contest Ghani’s own position as Head of State. It is Pakistan, who backed the Talib takeover of Kabul and other major cities in the 1990s, militarily and logistically. Pak perfidy is well known and the people of Afghanistan realise this. Of course, both countries cannot change geography and the Pashtun factor cannot be wished away.
If the Taliban, were to come to share power with the present government in Afghanistan, the likelihood of revive of an Islamist emirate in Afghanistan stands a higher chance.More importantly for the West lies the danger that in future more attacks against the West, could be planned and orchestrated from Afghanistan’s and Pakistan’s tribal areas with the connivance of the Taliban.
However, a little known incident has occurred, which brings to the fore the nature of Pak ‘assistance’ to Afghanistan. In the aftermath of the recent tragic avalanche in Afghanistan, (the maximum number of casualties having occurred in Panjshir), which claimed some 300 lives, Islamabad sent two air force C-130s, ostensibly packed full of aid material, including medicines, blankets and the like. The aid was gratefully received by the Afghan authorities in Kabul. Two separate airplanes were loaded and sent to Kabul with immediate assistance supplies for the victims of the Panjshir avalanche. "We will always be next to our Afghan brothers and sisters during the times of hardship, so we have brought them this aid," Aslam Khattakis cited as having said. But to the horror of the local Afghans, on opening the relief material they discovered that half the boxes were empty!They could not believe their eyes, so they double checked all the contents again, but found to their chagrin that they had been short-changed. So much for Pak promises!
One should therefore, be careful in believing Pakistan. President Ghani should thus stop living in a world of make-believe and not engage with the new ‘ruler’ of Pakistan, Gen. Raheel Sharif. Some reports indicate that Ghani is on the line to Gen. Sharif almost everyday. Note, Gen. Sharif has made four trips to Afghanistan after the Peshawar school attack, for what purpose one may well ask? On the surface, it is to get cooperation from Afghanistan for counter-terrorism. The larger game-plan is really to get Kabul to do a deal with the Taliban for power-sharing. That is the message the ISI sent to the Quetta Shura some time ago. Recall, that it was President Zia-ul-Haq who used US money and arms to create and fund the Afghan resistance to Soviet occupation. The origins of the Taliban go back to that time.
President Ghani has his compulsions in engaging Islamabad after coming to power. His own power position is not very strong and his CEO Dr. Abdullah continues to play secret games in the struggle for power. On top of that, Ghani has to make a compact with his own constituency, including Parliament. Islamabad has taken full advantage of this convulated national unity government. It is also trying to drive a wedge between the erstwhile Northern Alliance leader Dr. Abdullah and President Ghani.
Pakistan hosts a large number of Afghan refugees. But their plight has not been any better in recent times. In the aftermath of the Peshawar school attack, a number of Afghan refugees were forced to flee from Peshawar, for the fear of Taliban.Pak officials have deported scores of undocumented refugees to Afghanistan. This is despite assurances from the Ministry of States and Frontier Regions that the government would “maintain its traditional hospitality” towards Afghan refugees. In January 2015 alone, over 10,000 refugees were sent across the Turkham crossing. International NGO’s suspect that figures of those being sent home could be much higher as the number of undocumented Afghan refugees in Pakistan is as high as one million.
In this sense, Pakistan remains an uncertain ally for Afghanistan. One might state as an aside that in December last year a small group of Afghan students chose to protest in front of Capitol asking US Congress to cut all aid to Pakistan. One might well ask why this should have been so? Their point was US aid to Pakistan was being used to terrorise Afghanistan. The November 2014 suicide attack on Volleyball game by Pak-backed Taliban which killed 57 people convinced Afghan students in the US that Washington needed to stop all aid to Islamabad, if peace in the region was to be established. Therein lies the reality of Pakistan-Afghanistan relations. As US prepares itself for a withdrawal, it should understand that Pakistan is playing a double game. The same message should go out to Kabul also!
(The author is a Freelance Journalist and columnist)
(Opinions expressed in write-ups/articles/Letters are the sole responsibility of the authors and they may not represent the Scoop News)
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