Peace overtures with Pakistan have failed, says Afghan leader

Ashraf Ghani accuses Islamabad of continuing to make distinction between ‘good and bad terrorists’.

ISLAMABAD: Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani on Saturday accused Islamabad of continuing to distinguish between ‘good and bad terrorists’ as he excluded Pakistan from countries with whom Afghanistan has forged successful peace initiatives.

“Our regional initiatives with our neighbours are beginning to yield significant cooperative dividends … with the exception of Pakistan,” Ashraf Ghani said in his speech at the Nato summit in Warsaw.



“Despite clear commitment to a quadrilateral peace process, Pakistan’s dangerous distinction between good and bad terrorists is being maintained in practice,” he claimed.

Ghani said the key problem among Afghanistan’s neighbouring states is an absence of ‘agreed rules of the game’. “Thus we seek regional and global support in creating those rules, which will bind us to collective security and harmony.”

Talking about the nature of the conflict in Afghanistan, he said “it is multi-dimensional, ranging from al Qaeda and Da’ish to terrorist groups with Central Asian, Chinese, and Russian origins, to Pakistani groups classified as terrorists by Pakistan and Afghan Taliban groups.”

“Because these groups pose a threat to the region, the Islamic community and the world at large, we have devoted significant efforts to achieve cooperation regionally and within the Islamic community to defeat these groups,” the Afghan president added.



Afghanistan’s Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, who also addressed the gathering in Warsaw, did not mention Pakistan by name but said “sanctuaries of militants still exist in the neighbourhood.”

The two-day Warsaw summit also issued a declaration on Afghanistan, calling for combating corruption, countering narcotics trafficking and introducing electoral reforms.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 10^th, 2016.