Monitoring Desk: A year after the US-led NATO allies ran away from Kabul on August 15, 2021, Afghanistan is facing disaster after disaster without receiving adequate help from neighbors and from international humanitarian bodies. Famine, hunger, unprecedented floods, earthquakes, and pandemics are unfortunate realities.
“Pakistan is also facing unusual circumstances because terrorist outfits Pakistan defeated by sacrificing the blood of over 80,000 citizens and over 6,000 sons in uniform are reemerging and compelling Pakistan again for negotiations. In the past, no negotiations brought results for Pakistan and it had to purge terrorists with military might but the situation is reversing and terrorists are gaining ground in Pakistan while operating from Afghanistan”.
This was observed in an article written by senior journalist and analyst Agha Iqrar Haroon who served in Afghanistan as a war correspondent from 1996 to 2006.
In his article titled “A year after the fall of Kabul” published in the daily Pakistan Today, he writes around 57 NATO-friendly countries lost the Afghan War but nobody is a winner of this unusual and unfortunate conflict because the Afghan Taliban are facing different kinds of battles since the withdrawal of US-led forces and neighboring Pakistan is still facing the brunt of terrorism and radicalization that are sour fruits of Jihadism planted in Afghanistan 40 years ago to defeat Soviet former Union.
“Since 1979, Pakistan has been a proactive partner of the United States and the only country that faced the brunt of this historic partnership. There is a long list of what has been confronted by Pakistan in quest of pleasing the United States but the situation is still not pleasant for Pakistan even after the withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan. There was a time Pakistan used to say that the Delhi-friendly government of President Ashraf Ghani in Kabul was nurturing terrorism against Pakistan but the situation is getting worse under the Pakistan-friendly interim Afghan government in Kabul. After one year of the Fall of Kabul, I can see there is no difference in who is ruling in Kabul and Islamabad would remain at the receiving end of whatever comes from Afghanistan. In my opinion, negotiations with TTP would ultimately enhance confidence among terrorists who were virtually destroyed by Pakistan Army when Ashraf Ghani was in power in Kabul. I have been writing for a long that TTP could not be formed and could not be in the swing if it could have no support from the Afghan Taliban but the majority of thinkers had been claiming and blaming TTP as an Indian product. Yes, it got financial as well as technical support from Indian intelligence agencies but its survival within Afghanistan was directly or indirectly linked to its cordial relations with the Afghan Taliban, and reports suggest TTP foot soldiers helped Afghan Taliban to defeat the Afghan Army. The situation for Pakistan is not as simple as the majority of us believed and the killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri in the post area of Kabul in a US strike indicates that the Afghan Taliban are still supporting terrorist outfits directly or indirectly or they are so weak that they cannot stop or purge terrorists using Afghan land”, commented Haroon.
Click this link to read his original article at daily Pakistan Today.
