The underlying problem was an Afghan government structure lacking legitimacy in the eyes of the average Afghan, PM Khan says
Centreline Report
ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan has said that Pakistan must not be blamed for the outcome of war in Afghanistan and for the losses of the United States and stressed on setting eyes on the future to avoid another conflict instead of sticking with the blame game.
“Today, with Afghanistan at another crossroads, we must look to the future to prevent another violent conflict in that country rather than perpetuating the blame game of the past,” he said in his article published in the Washington Post on Monday.
Imran Khan said surely, Pakistan was not to blame for the fact that “300,000-plus well-trained and equipped Afghan security forces saw no reason to fight the lightly-armed Taliban”.
The underlying problem, he said, was an Afghan government structure lacking legitimacy in the eyes of the average Afghan.
He also expressed “surprise” over the recent Congressional hearings on Afghanistan, where “no mention was made of Pakistan’s sacrifices as a US ally in the war on terror for over two decades”. “Instead, we were blamed for America’s loss,” he added.
Khan recalled that since 2001, he repeatedly warned that the “Afghan war was unwinnable” and pointed that given their history, Afghans would never accept a protracted foreign military presence.
Even an outsider including Pakistan could not change this reality, he added.
The prime minister said unfortunately, the successive Pakistani governments after 9/11 sought to please the US instead of pointing out the error of a military-dominated approach.
“Desperate for global relevance and domestic legitimacy, Pakistan’s military dictator Pervez Musharraf agreed to every American demand for military support after 9/11. This cost Pakistan, and the US, dearly,” he said.
Imran Khan said the people the US asked Pakistan to target, included the groups trained jointly by the CIA and Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
“Back then, the Afghans were hailed as freedom fighters performing a sacred duty. President Reagan even entertained the Mujahideen at the White House,” he said.
The prime minister pointed out that after the defeat of the Soviets, the US abandoned Afghanistan and sanctioned Pakistan, leaving behind over five million Afghan refugees in Pakistan and a bloody civil war in Afghanistan.
“From this security vacuum emerged the Taliban, many born and educated in the Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan,” he said.
Post 9/11, he said, the US needed Pakistan again, “but this time against the very actors we had jointly supported to fight foreign occupation”.
He mentioned that the Mujahideens of the past were declared terrorists overnight, adding that militant groups declared war against Pakistani state after Pakistan supported the US war on terror.
He said General Musharraf offered Washington logistics and airbases, allowed a CIA footprint in Pakistan and even turned a blind eye to American drones bombing Pakistanis on their soil.
“For the first time ever, our army swept into the semi-autonomous tribal areas on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, which had earlier been used the staging ground for the anti-Soviet jihad,” he said.
He mentioned that for locals, the US was an “occupier” of Afghanistan just like the Soviets, deserving of the same treatment.
As Pakistan was now America’s collaborator, he said, “we too were deemed guilty and attacked”.
“This was made much worse by over 450 US drone strikes on our territory, making us the only country in history to be so bombed by an ally,” he said. “These strikes caused immense civilian casualties, riling up anti-American (and anti-Pakistan army) sentiment further”.
He said the militant groups declared war against the Pakistani state after its support to the US war on terror.
“The die was cast”, he said. “Between 2006 and 2015, nearly 50 militant groups declared jihad on the Pakistani state, conducting over 16,000 terrorist attacks on us”.
He mentioned that Pakistan suffered over 80,000 casualties and lost over $150 billion in the economy, besides driving 3.5 million citizens from their homes.
He said the militants escaping from Pakistani counter-terrorism efforts entered Afghanistan and were then supported and financed by Indian and Afghan intelligence agencies.
“Pakistan had to fight for its survival,” he stressed and quoted in this regard a former CIA station chief in Kabul who in 2009 wrote that the country was “beginning to crack under the relentless pressure directly exerted by the US”.
Yet the US continued to ask us to “do more” for the war in Afghanistan, he added.
Imran Khan recalled that a year earlier, in 2008, he met then-Senators Joe Biden, John Kerry and Harry Reid (among others) to explain this dangerous dynamic and stressed the futility of continuing a military campaign in Afghanistan.
Even so, political expediency prevailed in Islamabad throughout the post-9/11 period, he said.
He said former president Asif Zardari as “undoubtedly the most corrupt man to have led the country” told the Americans to continue targeting Pakistanis because “collateral damage worries you Americans. It does not worry me.”
Nawaz Sharif, he said, the next prime minister “was no different”.
Imran Khan said while Pakistan defeated the terrorist onslaught completely by 2016, the Afghan situation continued to deteriorate.
Explaining the “difference” of the outcome, he said “Pakistan had a disciplined army and intelligence agency, both of which enjoyed popular support”.
In Afghanistan, he said, the lack of legitimacy for an outsider’s protracted war was compounded by a corrupt and inept Afghan government, seen as a puppet regime without credibility, especially by rural Afghans.
“Tragically, instead of facing this reality, the Afghan and Western governments created a convenient scapegoat by blaming Pakistan, wrongly accusing us of providing safe havens to the Taliban and allowing their free movement across our border,” he said.
Khan said to satisfy Kabul, Pakistan offered a joint border visibility mechanism, suggested biometric border controls, advocated fencing the border (now largely done on our own), and other measures.
“Each idea was rejected,” he said. “Instead, the Afghan government intensified the ‘blame Pakistan’ narrative, aided by the Indian-run fake news networks operating hundreds of propaganda outlets in multiple countries”.
He emphasized that a more realistic approach would have been “to negotiate with the Taliban much earlier”, avoiding the embarrassment of the collapse of the Afghan army and the Ghani government.
He said the right thing for the world now was to engage with the new Afghan government to ensure peace and stability.
He said the international community desired inclusion of major ethnic groups in the Afghan government, respect for the rights of all Afghans, and commitments that Afghan soil shall never again be used for terrorism against any country.
“Taliban leaders will have greater reason and ability to stick to their promises if they are assured of the consistent humanitarian and development assistance they need to run the government effectively,” he said.
He said providing such incentives would also give the outside world additional leverage to continue persuading the Taliban to honor their commitments.
“If we do this right, we could achieve what the Doha peace process aimed at all along: an Afghanistan that is no longer a threat to the world, where Afghans can finally dream of peace after four decades of conflict,” he said.
Otherwise, he said, abandoning Afghanistan as tried before would “inevitably lead to a meltdown”.
“Chaos, mass migration and a revived threat of international terror will be natural corollaries. Avoiding this must surely be our global imperative,” he said.
