Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan criticized the United States for blaming his country for losing its war in Afghanistan, and expressed surprise as he watched recent congressional sessions on Afghanistan by not mentioning the sacrifices made by Pakistan as an ally of America.
He pointed out in an article published by the Washington Post that since 2001 he has repeatedly warned that the Afghan war cannot be won, and that, as their history attests, Afghans will never accept a long-term foreign military presence, and no outside party can, Including Pakistan, change this reality.
Khan lamented that successive Pakistani governments after September 11, 2001, sought to please the United States rather than pointing out the error of the military approach, and how, in a desperate bid for global relevance and domestic legitimacy, Pakistani military dictator Pervez Musharraf agreed to every American request for military support. After September 11, which cost Pakistan and the United States a heavy price, he said.
He elaborated on examples of successive Pakistani governments' cooperation with the United States, and the scourge that this entailed on his country and its having to fight for its survival, as a former head of a CIA unit (CIA) wrote in Kabul in 2009 that the country "began to It succumbs under relentless pressure directly from the United States.”
"However, Washington continued to demand that we do more for the war in Afghanistan," Khan said.
Afghans, as their history attests, will never accept a long-term foreign military presence, and no outside party, including Pakistan, can change this reality.
In the opinion of the Pakistani prime minister, a more realistic approach would have been in negotiating with the Taliban long ago to avoid the embarrassment that led to the collapse of the Afghan army and the government of President Ashraf Ghani, and that the main problem is that the structure of the Afghan government lacked legitimacy in the eyes of the average Afghan .
He said he is convinced that the right thing for the world now is to engage with the new Afghan government to ensure peace and stability, and that the international community will want to see the participation of major ethnic groups in the government and respect for the rights and obligations of all Afghans, and that Afghan territory will never again be used for terrorism against any country.
Then Taliban leaders would have greater reason and capacity to deliver on their promises if they were assured of the continued humanitarian and development assistance they need to run the government effectively.
Providing such incentives will give the outside world additional leverage to continue persuading the Taliban to live up to their commitments.
Khan concluded that if this is managed correctly, what the Doha peace process has been aiming for can be achieved all along, namely that Afghanistan is no longer a threat to the world, where Afghans can finally dream of peace after 4 decades of conflict.
The alternative, as it was tried before in the 1990s, will inevitably lead to collapse because chaos, mass migration and the renewed threat of international terrorism will be corollaries, and avoiding this must surely be our global duty.