EXPLAINED Why Afghan Govt Has Its Eye On Pakistan In Fight Against The Taliban

At a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) meeting convened by India, its president for the month of August, the representative for Afghanistan did not mince his words as he accused Pakistan of providing a haven for the Taliban and extending support to the militants who have now launched an unrelenting and expanding campaign against Afghan government forces. Pakistan has consistently denied allegations that it backs the Taliban, but reports from a variety of sources suggest that it is far from the truth. Here’s why Kabul and Islamabad keep trading charges when it comes to the Taliban.

What Does The Afghan Govt Say?
Ghulam Isaczai, the permanent representative of the Afghan government at UN, told a Security Council meeting on August 6 that the situation in his country “has rapidly deteriorated due to increased violence by the Taliban and their brutal military offensive on major cities and population centres in several provinces”.

With the US in the process of completing a full withdrawal of its troops from the country by the end of August after 20 years of occupation, the country has collapsed into a spiral of fighting and “since mid-April, the Taliban and their affiliate foreign terrorist groups have launched more than 5,500 attacks in 31 of the country’s 34 provinces”, Isaczai said.

Pointing to external support for the Taliban, he said that “fighters representing 20 groups — including Al-Qaida and (ISIS) — are fighting alongside the Taliban against the Afghan population and security forces”. “This is not a civil war, but a war of criminalided and terrorist networks fought on the backs of Afghans,” he said.

Isaczai also sought to single out Islamabad amid the rapidly unravelling situation in his country, saying that “the Taliban continue to enjoy a haven in Pakistan”. Calling for urgent action to rein in the Taliban, he urged Pakistan to help remove and dismantle Taliban sanctuaries, and their supply and logistics lines by establishing a joint monitoring and verification mechanism.

Kabul and Islamabad have increasingly come to trade barbs on Taliban. At a meeting in Uzbekistan last month, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had claimed that “over 10,000 jihadi fighters from Pakistan and other places in the last month” had entered Afghanistan to aid the Taliban offensive. He had gone on to allege that Pakistan had failed to get the Taliban to “negotiate seriously” for a peaceful resolution in Afghanistan.

The strained ties between the two countries hit a new low when Kabul last month recalled its ambassador and diplomats to Pakistan following the kidnapping for several hours of Afghan ambassador’s daughter.

What Has Pakistan Said?
Confronted by President Ghani in Uzbekistan, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan had said that the allegations of Pakistani support to the Taliban were “extremely unfair” and that since “the country that is going to be most affected by turmoil in Afghanistan is Pakistan… The last thing Pakistan wants is more conflict… and turbulence in Afghanistan”.

While Pakistan is seen as having played a key role in bringing the Taliban to the talks table — even though the fate of the negotiations with the Afghan government in Qatar’s capital Doha have sputtered amid the Taliban’s military push — Khan appeared to question the timing of the dialogue, saying, “Why are the Taliban going to compromise when the [troop] exit date was given [by the US], with only a few thousand American troops left? Why would they listen to us when they are sensing victory?”

Following the August 6 UNSC meeting, Pakistan said that it had wanted to participate in it but was denied by India. “We made a formal request for participation but it was denied,” Munir Akram, Pakistan’s Permanent Representative, told reporters at the UN headquarters in New York.

Why The Allegations?
Pakistan has found it difficult to convince the international community that it does not provide safe haven, and support to the Taliban, and other militant and Islamist groups. Reports say that the top Taliban leadership had crossed over into Pakistan in 2001, right when the US began its offensive against terror bases in Afghanistan.

In July 2017, the then US President Donald Trump had said that “Pakistan often gives safe haven to agents of chaos, violence, and terror”. To the US President’s accusations and the Afghan government’s recent claims, Islamabad has responded by saying that these amount to attempts to deflect the blame on Pakistan for the situation in its neighbouring country.

But experts note that, “(w)hile there are multiple factors that have caused the current war in Afghanistan to persist for nearly two decades — including Afghan governance failures, a host of US and broader NATO mistakes, and the Taliban’s access to resources from foreign donors and the drug trade — sanctuary in Pakistan has been critical”.

While Pakistan has sought proof to back the allegations that it provides intelligence and military aid to the Taliban, instances of support on the ground have come to the fore. Reports have cited videos on social media of Pakistani citizens turning up at rallies to show support for the Taliban with German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle citing an unidentifed source in the Pakistan province of Balochistan as saying that “the Taliban enjoy local support in our area, but the rallies are not possible without support from state authorities”.

Pakistan has banned Taliban offshoots like The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and points to its own troubles with the outfit to argue that it does not support Taliban. But Islamabad is said to be using the Taliban as leverage to control TTP, which continues to have ties with the Taliban “despite growing distrust” and “supports the Afghan Taliban militarily inside Afghanistan against Afghan Forces”.

A 2018 paper by the US-based think tank, Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), also mentioned Pakistan’s support of the Haqqani Network, noting that “the Taliban and Haqqani Network’s sanctuary in Pakistan and state support from organisations like ISI have been essential to their war effort, and the US failure to undermine this safe haven may be Washington’s most significant mistake” in Afghanistan.

Asked about rounding up Taliban militants, PM Khan had pointed last month to refugee camps in the country that are home to three million Afghans, saying that it was not possible to identify the militants among them even as the Taliban is known to draw from these refugee camps to fill its fighting ranks.

“Now, there are camps of 500,000 people, there are camps of 100,000 people. And Taliban are not some military outfits, they are normal civilians. And if there are some civilians in these camps, how is Pakistan supposed to hunt these people down? How can you call them sanctuaries?” Khan argued.

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