Daily Times

On Friday, the advisor to the Prime Minister (PM) on foreign affairs and national security, Sartaj Aziz, visited Kabul to attend a regional economic conference and also held meetings with the president, foreign minister and national security adviser there. “The main thing that we both agreed upon was to restore trust, end the blame game against each other and create a positive atmosphere,” Sartaj Aziz said in comments broadcast on state television on Saturday about his meeting with President Ashraf Ghani. Addressing the participants of the sixth edition of Regional Economic Conference on Afghanistan (RECCA) in Kabul, President Ashraf Ghani said: “Pakistan’s leaders express the desire for peace but face the challenge of controlling those forces that believe an unstable and weakened Afghanistan is better than a strong and confident neighbour.”
The fact of the matter is that Pakistan wants to see a strong, stable and sovereign Afghanistan so that it cannot be influenced by other countries to create problems for Pakistan. Therefore, President Ashraf Ghani should be watchful of the remnants of the former president, Hamid Karzai, who wish to see strained relations between the two countries. With persistent accusations against Pakistan of funding and arming militants, they want to pressurise Ashraf Ghani into invoking agreements with India signed by Karzai. President Ghani must be remembering Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan’s resistance against the former USSR, and having accommodated millions of refugees on Pakistani soil, who have yet to be repatriated. After his election as president, Ashraf Ghani’s top priority was to have closer ties with Pakistan. For one, he wanted to consolidate his position with the cooperation of Pakistan.
Secondly, he hoped that Islamabad would push Afghan Taliban leaders to come to the negotiating table, which could end Afghanistan’s long war. With the efforts of Pakistan and perhaps China, official peace talks with militants were held in July 2015. But after the Afghan government announced that Mullah Mohammad Omar had died two years ago, the process was suspended and the Taliban launched a new wave of attacks in Kabul, killing more than 50 people. Afghanistan and Pakistan accuse each other of doing too little to prevent Taliban fighters and other militants from operating in each other’s territory. Afghan officials have long accused Pakistan of tolerating or even supporting the Afghan Taliban, a charge denied by Pakistan. Sartaj Aziz held discussions with the Afghan president to remove the trust deficit and to find a way to end the acrimony in the relationship after last month’s attacks in Kabul.
The question is: why have the Afghan army and police failed to stop militants or intruders when they try to cross the porous border between the two countries? Last month, at least 29 members of a pro-government militia was killed in an attack in northern Afghanistan when a Taliban suicide bomber targeted a gathering in the province of Kunduz. It has to be mentioned that the distance between Peshawar and Kabul is 227 km and from Kabul to Kunduz province 334 km in the north. How is it possible that the militants — who they call Haqqani elements — cross the border and travel for over 560 km to attack and come back to their ‘safe havens’? In fact, Afghan intelligence has the remnants of the previous regime and Northern Alliance elements also do not wish to see talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban succeed.
Secondly, the Afghan establishment accuses Pakistan of every terror attack in Afghanistan. Thirdly, the US and Afghanistan wish to see Pakistan do more but they have done nothing to nab Mullah Fazlullah, the chief of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), who is ensconced in Kunar, and his thugs attack Pakistan villages with impunity. It is now time that Afghanistan also do more. Reportedly, Sartaj Aziz carried three key messages to Kabul: good wishes from the people and the leadership of Pakistan, Pakistan’s commitment to maintaining friendly, brotherly, neighbourly relations with Afghanistan and the need to stop the anti-Pakistan campaign, as it is counter-productive and does not serve the best interests of the peoples of the two countries. But once again there appears to be a lapse on the part of Pakistan’s Foreign Office, as the issue of Mullah Fazlullah had not been raised in the above meeting.
In fact, Pakistan should raise the point of Mullah Fazlullah whenever Afghanistan talks about the Haqqani network. Pakistan hosted the first round of Taliban peace talks in July but a planned second round was indefinitely postponed after the Afghan government announced that the Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, had died years earlier. The talks could not be revived later because of a rift between the Taliban over new leadership and tension between Pakistan and Afghanistan after deadly bombings in Kabul, which the Afghan government said were carried out by militants who have their bases in the Pakistani northwest. This means that some elements in the Afghan government do not wish to see rapprochement between the Afghan government and the Taliban, which is why they announced the death of Mullah Omer at this crucial moment.
Blaming Pakistan, which gave unstinted support to President Ghani, is uncalled for. As far as India is concerned, it is worried about its investment, as it has already given two billion dollars to Afghanistan as aid for development, and is committed to pay for Russian arms. The decision came as a follow up to the promise made in the Strategic Partnership Agreement between the two countries in 2011, in which India agreed to assist in “training, equipping and capacity building programmes” to strengthen the Afghan national security forces. Having said that, it is now Afghanistan’s turn to do more.

The writer is a freelance columnist. He can be reached at mjamil1938@hotmail.com