Ghani says Pak-Afghan ties not brotherly

The Afghan president said terrorism was a big threat to Pakistan as well as Afghanistan


News Desk/arshad Shaheen September 28, 2015
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. PHOTO: REUTERS

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said on Monday that relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan were not brotherly but like a relationship between two states. In an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation on the first anniversary of his presidential term, Ghani urged Islamabad to take the same stance against terrorists targeting Pakistan or any other country.

The Afghan president’s statement comes at a time when relations between the two countries are tense, with leaders from both sides accusing the other of harbouring terrorists. Popular belief in Afghanistan questions Pakistan’s sincerity in seeking a cooperative, mutually beneficial relationship.

Read: Pak-Afghan ties: ‘We will have to go the extra mile to end impasse’

“The point is that they [Pakistanis] cannot adopt a hard stance against any terrorist activities in their own country and a different stance for terrorists devastating Afghanistan,” Ghani
said in the interview. “Peace between the two countries is of paramount importance,” he added. “Unless there is peace, the hideouts of terrorists as well as the system supporting them will remain there.”

The Afghan president said terrorism was a big threat to Pakistan as well as Afghanistan. “The [attacks on] children and soldiers in Peshawar is a grim reminder for them [Pakistanis] that you cannot differentiate between good and bad as long as terrorists are concerned,” he said while referring to the Army Public School attack, which had left more than 150 people, mostly schoolchildren, dead in December 2014.

Read: Souring ties : Pak-Afghan trade deals stall on India

Ghani said it was high time the Taliban decided whether they were Afghans or tools of international extremism and regional hegemony. “If they choose to be Afghans, which I hope they will, peace will return here,” he said. “Otherwise they will become isolated as no one will support them.”

He added that the Taliban needed to understand that they had become unpopular for killing children and innocent people. “The society is fed up with war and wants peace.”

 

Published in The Express Tribune, September 29th, 2015.

COMMENTS (27)

Afzal | 8 years ago | Reply @Oats: Agree, very insightful reflection!
Afzal | 8 years ago | Reply @mahakaalchakra: Your brain cells are frozen in foolishness. You seem to be living your life in a pot hole set on a path of self appeasing. You come here and use this page and abuse our hospitality. We certainly have had painfully challenging part of our history which more than half a century latter we are trying to put behind us. Thre are lot of things that can be said about your bharatmata but we generally follow a policy of not putting you to any shame when they are themselves doing that to them. How many billions you think Pakistan has taken for looking after the refugees. Do you have any data or is it Hamid Karzai' whisper. At least we looked after them unlike India who used the excuse of refugee influx to invade our eastern wing. Times have passed, India's malicious work of violating our sovereignty in 1971 after years of conspiring has been recorded in SA history and Pakistan has identified factors which had made it vulnerable. To day Pakistan is formidably strong and capable of giving a good knock despite our economic mess. We could even assist and join forces if the current Khalistan movement was to rise from its dormant mode and do the same what India did in East Pakistan. Think before writing any further rubbish here.
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