Refusal to accept pro-India govt in Kabul sours Pak-Afghan ties

Senator Farhatullah Babar says Islamabad always wanted a Pakistan-installed regime in Kabul

Senior leader of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Senator Farhatullah Babar on Thursday said that the Prime Minister Imran Khan's recent remarks, describing the current Afghan government as ‘a hurdle to peace,’ was a reiteration of undeclared state policy to not accept any Kabul government perceived to be India-friendly.

Addressing a seminar on Afghan Peace Talks under the auspices of the Shaheed Bhutto Foundation in the National Press Club (NPC) Islamabad on Thursday, Babar said that a fragmented Afghanistan with a weak, Pakistan-installed, regime that is not too friendly with India is what Islamabad has been seeking for decades and lay at the root of the problem.

“Our Afghanistan policy is based on zero sum game with India, and that needs to change,” he said, adding, “We exaggerated the India threat to create a justification for the Taliban.” He recalled that in the 1980s Pakistan insisted that the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) government be replaced by a neutral government.

He said that the proxy Taliban's refusal to have peace talks with the Afghan government was similar to Pakistan's refusal in the past to talk directly with the Kabul government, due to which the UN special envoy Diego Cardovez’s had to shuttle between Kabul and Islamabad.

Babar said, “When finally the talks did take place in Switzerland, they were ‘proximity talks,’ where Cardovez ridiculously shuttled from room to room because we did not want direct talks.”

He said that the proximity talks led to Geneva Accords, Soviet withdrawal followed by civil war, endless bloodshed and huge geopolitical chaos. There is a danger that the result of a peace imposed on Afghanistan without the Afghan government will also be chaos.

Senior leader of PPP said that a 'minus one' formula has been at work in Pakistan for quite some time.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 26^th, 2019.