Islamabad - Despite Pakistan’s intimation to Afghan authorities about a census exercise that was to be carried out by a team escorted by security personnel, why Afghan security forces invaded two Pakistani villages along Chaman border that left 12 people dead and 40 injured.

The tragic incident comes two weeks after high-level military and parliamentary delegations visited Kabul bringing back a sense of optimism that relations between two neighbours would soon thaw out again.

Unfortunately, Afghan security forces’ invasion of Pakistani villages near Chaman border quivered the sense of optimism in Pakistan, taking almost everyone by surprise.

Absurdly, this was not the first time Islamabad was embarrassed. Kabul, if one goes by record, did not let pass any opportunity to embarrass Pakistan whenever, in the past, it offered peace overtures to Afghanistan.

There could be various factors for the deep trust deficit between Pakistan and Afghanistan even though Islamabad had tried many times to convince Kabul that it does not harbour the alleged ambition of ‘Strategic Depth’.

Also, Pakistan has been encouraging to use avenues which could help facilitate an Afghan-led Afghan-owned peace process to resolve the lingering Afghan conflict.

Islamabad’s policy stems from the belief that peace in Pakistan is directly linked to peace in Afghanistan, Afghan authorities continue to remain hostage to Pakistan bashing.

Whether it was Pakistan’s facilitation of Afghan government-Taliban meetings, quadrilateral peace process or a Russian peace initiative on Afghanistan or bilateral cooperation in intelligence sharing and other issues of bilateral interest including border management, every effort by Islamabad was sabotaged (by Afghanistan) in one way or the other.

What the underlying principles of Afghan government’s blame-game against Pakistan rather than accepting its peace overtures? A cursory look at the past events suggests that Afghan authorities have been targeting Pakistan with a design.

What is that design? Prime facie, Afghans at the helm of affairs are following the same policy of denial which their elders had followed since 1947 and that is not to recognise Pakistan as a legitimate neighbouring state. They remained hostage to this policy largely because of the animosity between Pakistan and its eastern adversary India. So except for few governments, almost all the governments in Afghanistan remained deeply dependent on India for one reason or the other.

Except for few Afghan Pashtun leaders, Afghan leaders especially the non-Pushtuns have been by and large playing this card to promote vested interest with India and follow the policy of negating Pakistan’s efforts for normalised relations.

Leaders of the Northern Alliance solely remained dependent on India for their wellbeing and other commercial interest.

In return, they remained a hurdle in normalisation of Afghan-Pakistan relations. Interestingly, this had happened despite the fact that Pakistan hosted more than three million Afghan refugees of all hue and colour who were affected by Afghan war.

Objectively, hope for normalised relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan had risen after President Ashraf Ghani visited Pakistan shortly after his election. But that opportunity was lost when he started blaming Pakistan for every incident of terrorism that took place in Afghanistan.

What prompted him to deviate from commitments he had made to Pakistan during his visit was largely out of political compulsions?

Leaders of the Northern Alliance now led by the Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah have squeezed “the freedom of action” of President Ghani.

Virtually, he cannot risk asserting his authority because of the overwhelming presence of non-Pushtuns in the powerful defence establishment. He did take a few actions especially when he removed the former head of the NDS- a non-Pushtun who had played a key role in forging the NDS-RAW nexus.

On its part, Pakistan has successfully purged its border regions with Afghanistan of all types of terrorists and their sanctuaries and is now busy fencing its border with Afghanistan to prevent terrorists’ cross-border movement.

The post 9/11 US-led war against terror, in which Pakistan also played the role of a frontline state and consequently suffered enormous losses, has also failed to restore peace in the war-ravaged Afghanistan. Despite the sober fact that the US had pumped billions of dollars to rid the Afghanistan of the civil strife the US-led effort failed to restore peace in Afghanistan 

Consequently, Afghanistan is facing more serious challenges now than it faced before pre-9/11 largely because of the fact that the Taliban whose government was overthrown are in control of a large swathe of the territory of Afghanistan.

Also, the growing footprints of Islamic State Khurasan (ISK), which many analysts believe is the brainchild of the United States to justify its presence in Afghanistan, is another challenge not because it is targeting Afghans but because of the concerns raised by Russia, China and other neighbouring countries of Afghanistan as a potential threat to their security as well.

President Donald Trump’s administration is reportedly mulling over sending more troops for an indefinite period ostensibly to stabilise Afghanistan, only time will decide the outcome of the US-led efforts.

 

Maqbool Malik