Prime Minister Imran Khan gave a befitting reply to the baseless accusations of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani during his address at the conference on Central and South Asia Regional Connectivity, Challenges and Opportunities held at Congress Centre, Tashkent on Friday. Prime Minister Imran Khan rejected the assertions of President Ghani made against Pakistan for “not supporting peace” and said blaming Pakistan for what is going on in Afghanistan is extremely unfair, Peace in Afghanistan is our foremost priority. While naming Ghani during his addresses Prime Minister said Mr. Ghani, I want to make it clear to you that Pakistan will be the last country to think about supporting turmoil and unrest in Afghanistan, so Afghanistan must consider Pakistan as a ‘partner of peace’ rather than blaming it for the ongoing unrest. According to Imran Khan the current unrest was the outcome of using a military solution by the United States instead of a political one. The prime minister said Pakistan would continue to support reconciliation in Afghanistan and urged the Afghan stakeholders and the international community to gear up efforts for a “politically negotiated settlement”. Prime Minister Imran Khan rightly said that Pakistan had made every effort as per its capacity and reach for restoration of Peace in Afghanistan including bringing the Taliban to the dialogue table. Pakistan is directly affected by unrest in Afghanistan in all spheres including finance, security, law and order and administration of refugees if influx takes place and elimination of the potential trade and connectivity with Central Asia. The Prime Minister further said that the right time to engage Taliban in negotiations was before the pullout of the US troops from Afghanistan because there was a balance of power between two opposing factions. Presently, Taliban are overwhelmed due to recent successes and demonstrate no interest in the dialogues. On other hand, Pakistan was consistently urging the US for a responsible withdrawal coinciding with the peace process but unfortunately no party including US, Afghan Republican and Taliban heard Pakistan’s advice and all the parties pursued their interests and plunged the country into crisis. US pulled out its troops before conceiving a broad-based Political settlement, while Afghan Republicans and Taliban failed to settle down their differences in the timeframe set by the US for its withdrawal. Presently, a more grave threat is being ignored by the world and Afghan parties is the potential rise of ISIS, which has a significant presence in Eastern provinces and current anarchy has provided it sufficient space and time to establish its stronghold in those areas.
The Ghani government opposed the US-Taliban peace talks in its beginning because they perceived it as a threat to their authoritative rule in the country. However, when the process entered Intra-Afghan negotiation phase, they scratched the whole process into pieces.
It is to inform both Ghani and Taliban that Peace in Afghanistan is the problem of Afghans, if any other country wants to facilitate you guys, there is not an obligation to it, if you can’t accept other’s contributions you must not humiliate them, however world knows that you (Ghani) are screaming for the chair otherwise you would not stay a minute in Kabul when you drop it.
