Daily Times

Much of Pakistan’s media has come over all giddy.
All thanks to the NATO Defence College report: ‘Regional Power and Post-NATO Afghanistan’ (June 2021) that was published this week. Popular consensus here at home is that the strategic research paper notes that Pakistan supports a peaceful Afghanistan while India does not.

As with most things, however, the devil lies in the detail. In reality, the authors make a slightly different point. Islamabad is actively involved in the peace talks while New Delhi is the only regional player to have shunned engagement with the Taliban. Yet while this signals a rejection of the US-Taliban peace deal — Washington tore this up the moment it decided on a no-strings withdrawal complete with revised timeline.

Yet this doesn’t mean that the NDC paper should be dismissed out of hand.

Pakistan is presented as being on the right side of regional power security ambitions. For, along with China, Russia and Iran, Islamabad favours the US and NATO exit from Afghanistan; albeit not the hit-and-run taking place right now. Significantly, think-tankers and policymakers are finally waking up to Pakistan’s diminished influence over the Taliban. Indeed, for all President Ghani’s loose talk of how this country holds the key to Afghan peace — he appears oblivious to how the Taliban have been gradually moving beyond a Pakistan-centric foreign policy. As the report’s authors note, the group undertook “official visits to Islamabad, Moscow, Beijing, Tashkent and Tehran in 2019-2020, seeking regional support and international legitimacy”. Also recognised is how Pakistan does not welcome the idea of a Taliban government with a monopoly on power. Not least because of genuine concerns that another Taliban take-over could see Afghanistan become a hub of international terrorism; including those outfits that would do this country harm. Back in November of last year, Pakistan outrightly accused New Delhi of running dozens of training camps in Afghanistan for “globally outlawed militant groups to plot terrorism on Pakistani soil”.

India has paid the price of disengagement by being excluded from multilateral peace talks; most notably Russia’s so-called Troika-plus format comprising Moscow, China, Washington and Islamabad. However, all this looks set to change with a new man in the White House hot seat. Indeed, New Delhi has reportedly accepted President Biden’s invitation to attend a new regional peace process that already includes the US, Russia, China, Pakistan and Iran under the UN framework.

Pakistan should welcome the move, even if New Delhi is rather late to the game. After all, India has been able to turn a blind eye to Afghan peace for far too long. While Islamabad has been made to take the rap again and again. That is about to change. *