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Pakistan’s PM says ‘US really messed it up’ in Afghanistan
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan said the United States “really messed it up in Afghanistan” and that Washington should have pushed for a political settlement much earlier.
In an interview with PBS News Hour on Tuesday night, Khan sai: “I think the US has really messed it up in Afghanistan.”
“And people like me who kept saying that there’s no military solution, who know the history of Afghanistan, we were called — people like me were called anti-American. I was called Taliban Khan.”
He said by the time the US realised that there was no military solution in Afghanistan, “unfortunately, the bargaining power of the Americans or the NATO had gone”.
Khan told PBS the US should have opted for a political settlement much earlier, when there were as many as 150,000 Nato troops in Afghanistan.
“But once they had reduced the troops to barely 10,000, and then, when they gave an exit date, the Taliban thought they had won. And so, therefore, it was very difficult for now to get them to compromise,” he said.
When the interviewer asked whether he thought the Taliban resurgence was a positive development for Afghanistan, the prime minister reiterated that the only good outcome would be a political settlement, “which is inclusive”.
“Obviously, Taliban [will be] part of that government,” he added.
Khan said from Pakistan’s point of view, the last thing they want is a civil war; “that is the worst-case scenario, because we then … we face two scenarios, one [of them being] a refugee problem,” he said.
“Already, Pakistan is hosting over three million Afghan refugees. And what we fear is that a protracted civil war would [bring] more refugees. And our economic situation is not such that we can have another influx.”
Former president Hamid Karzai said in a meeting with Iran’s ambassador and special representative, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, that education of girls was a “vital issue” for Afghanistan.
Karzai said he appreciated Iran’s cooperation and its standing with the Afghan people, especially Iran’s contributions to education in Afghanistan.
During the meeting, Karzai said peace and stability in the region are in the interest of all regional countries.
A shipment of humanitarian aid from Uzbekistan was handed over on Thursday to the local officials of Balkh province in the trade port of Hairatan.
Local authorities said the aid, which includes flour, oil, wheat, sugar and meat, has been handed over by Uzbekistan’s Surkhandarya governor to the governor of Balkh.
The governor of Surkhandarya stated the purpose of sending this aid was to support the people of Afghanistan and stressed the need for the development of good relations between the two countries.
Islamabad’s special envoy for Afghanistan Asif Durrani said on Wednesday that Pakistan has suffered more due to Afghanistan’s internal situation than Pakistan has suffered in three wars with India in terms of blood spilt and finances drained.
Durrani said at a one-day International Conference titled “Pakistan in the Emerging Geopolitical Landscape”, which was organized by the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad (ISSI) and the German Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES), that over 80,000 Pakistanis died in the two decades of the War on Terror and that his country was still counting its dead and injured.
“After the withdrawal of NATO forces, it was hoped that peace in Afghanistan would bring peace to the region. However, such expectations were short-lived,” he said.
He also stated that attacks by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militant group on Pakistan’s border areas increased by 65 percent, while suicide attacks increased by 500 percent.
“The TTP’s enhanced attacks on Pakistan while using Afghan soil have been a serious concern for Pakistan. Another worrying aspect is the participation of Afghan nationals in these attacks,” he said.
Durrani also said Pakistan had suffered geopolitically since the Soviet Union invaded the neighboring country.
“The post-9/11 world order has negatively impacted Pakistan. Apart from losing 80,000 citizens’ lives, including 8,000 law enforcement agency personnel, the country’s economic opportunity cost is estimated at $150 billion,” Durrani said.
Talking about the future outlook for Pakistan in the regional context, Durrani said that while “our eastern neighbor is likely to continue with its anti-Pakistan pursuits, the western border poses an avoidable irritant in the short to medium term.”
However, he said Pakistan can overcome its difficulties with Afghanistan, including the TTP challenge.
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