Daily Times

Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi was spot on, during his meeting with the visiting Taliban delegation at the Foreign Office on Tuesday, when he said peace in Afghanistan is so close and everybody has worked so hard for it that all Afghan stakeholders should do whatever is necessary to make sure that all crucial negotiations proceed as planned. The most troublesome of all the points in the Kabul-Taliban deal, if it can be called that, was the matter of the government releasing some hardcore terrorists, but that was overcome after a bit of back and forth. Yet all the time when the government first refused to release some of the many prisoners that the Taliban had asked for, and the militants threatened to walk away from the peace deal, leaders in capitals from Islamabad all the way to Washington must have been holding their breath for a while.

That, perhaps, is why FM Qureshi felt compelled to bring up this particular point at the discussion. To think that Pakistan would for some reason not be in favour of peace in Afghanistan, as almost everybody claimed through much of the so-called war on terror, simply flies in the face of facts such as hosting millions upon millions of Afghan refugees over at least four decades and doing everything possible to bring peace to the war ravaged country. Nothing is more detrimental to the interests of Pakistan than an unsettled Afghanistan; one needs only to look at the refuge our own militants have found there because of the circumstances to know why.

Hopefully whatever irritants were left in the road to peace have finally been overcome and now it’s just a matter of procedure to finally wrap up this ugly war. And, for once, maybe because everyone is now suffering from war fatigue all parties are on the same page and what to get it over with. President Trump would do anything to put this war behind us by the time the American people go to the polls again. Pakistan is simply fed up with it and has done everything possible to facilitate the peace. The Taliban will also take it, even though some ground commanders have disagreed, because it gives them a shot at partaking in government one more time. And Ghani has to accept it because his masters in Washington say so. Everything seems in place so hopefully peace is not very far away. *