Being a sovereign country, Afghanistan should be free to make its own decisions and choose its strategic partners.
JUBAIL, SAUDI ARABIA: Pakistan’s foreign ministry outlined on October 6 its expectations from “those in positions of power in Afghanistan” saying that they needed “to demonstrate requisite maturity and responsibility”.
These expectations come in the backdrop of India and Afghanistan signing a strategic pact last week in New Delhi. Clearly, the impending departure of America from the region seems to have accelerated activities in the region with various countries trying to do whatever they can fit to safeguard their interests. The Afghans and the Americans have intensified their rhetoric against the Pakistanis, while the latter warmly welcomed a senior Chinese official, its minister of public security, in the wake of these allegations.
It should be understood that whoever sits in Kabul, whether it is Karzai or the Taliban, will not take any dictation from Pakistan’s foreign ministry. Being a sovereign country, Afghanistan should be free to make its own decisions and choose its strategic partners. As for the Pakistani security establishment’s strategists, they have some tough choices: whether not to accept the facts on the ground and still seek so-called strategic depth inside Afghanistan, or to think with a cool and calm mind and ask themselves why Pakistan is disliked so much in Afghanistan. After all, it has provided shelter to millions of Afghan refugees for years and that should count for something, though the reality right now seems to be that it doesn’t count for much, with New Delhi and Kabul speaking the same tongues, as they did decades ago.
Of course, this should not mean that we should help bring the Taliban back in power in Afghanistan, because we should know what the rule of the Taliban did to Afghanistan, and to Pakistan, in the 1990s.
Masood Khan
Published in The Express Tribune, October 9th, 2011.
