These days, a dark and deepening crisis confronts the people of Afghanistan as a consequence of withdrawal of NATO troops from the country. The Afghani people have longed for, demanded, and deserved peace. For decades the country has been attacked by outside forces, destabilizing its diverse regions.

Pakistan is Afghanistan’s immediate neighbor, and its security establishment is clandestinely supporting Taliban and sending it’s prime minister, Imran Khan, to make statements at the global stage as if they have no stake in territorial gains of Taliban. Taliban is reestablishing the Sharia-style governance, evoking the fear of those days in the 1990s when cities like Kandahar were in total control of Taliban and when trimming one’s beard was a crime and when young girls were not allowed to go to school.

Afghans who have migrated to Denmark, Sweden and Norway are protesting against the gains of Taliban, and one Afghani, who owns an Indian restaurant, recently said to me that everyone, including children, in Afghanistan, knows that Taliban get their weapons, their strategy and medical help from Pakistan. They attack Afghanistan and recede back into Pakistan so they cannot get caught, and most of the Taliban leaders are hiding in Pakistan. It is not just Osama Bin Laden who was hiding in Pakistan, it is assumed that the top Taliban leaders are present there as well.

How long will the international community allow Pakistan unencumbered and unhindered to continue along these fault lines? Since the war on terror began in 2001, when the Western countries came together to hunt down Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaida terrorists, they have not had much success in restricting Pakistan’s clandestine support and tolerance of extremist Islamic groups which have destabilized Afghanistan and carried out terror acts elsewhere, among others also in India.

Soon after the deadliest terror attack on American soil carried out by Al Qaida with bases in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region, President George W. Bush launched Operation Enduring Freedom. September 11, 2001 was a turning point, but Pakistan’s strategy outwitted the Western strategy and even though there was ample proof available that time about Pakistan’s double game, the Western alliance decided to seek the support of Pakistan. They provided them once again with sophisticated military equipment, which, instead of being used against Al Qaida, ended up being used against India and Afghanistan.

It is already in the public domain that a former head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), General Hamid Gul, has bragged about how Pakistan’s military agencies connivingly used the military aid provided by the United States to continue its support for Taliban and other extremist forces like the Lashkar-e-Toiba. He often gets quoted for his television statement made in 2014 : “When history is written, it will be stated that the ISI defeated the Soviet Union in Afghanistan with the help of America. Then there will be another sentence. The ISI, with the help of America, defeated America.”

Paradoxically, seven years after his statement was broadcast, the present-day scenario seems to prove him right. Despite innumerable warnings from India, the US and Western countries kept involving Pakistan in all strategic engagements, offering sophisticated equipment, which helped Taliban, and they consistently kept killing the NATO troops, making their presence a contentious political subject in elections in Western countries. This resulted in lowering of support for their troops’ presence in Afghanistan.

It is time for the West to rethink its Pakistan strategy. While the generals of Pakistan are making the lives of Afghans miserable and unbearable in Afghanistan and Pakistan, they come to Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo, London and Geneva to drink wine and whisky on their holidays. They send their children to study abroad, often in Western countries. They buy property abroad; they mobilize and radicalize the Pakistani diaspora abroad. So, if the Western countries cannot send soldiers and their armies to fight in Pakistan and Afghanistan, then they can surely do something to stop war criminals and those responsible for spreading and supporting terror from getting entry visas to their countries.

Try imposing visa restrictions for a few decades! It might make the generals rethink their policies when they cannot escape the results of their own bad deeds. Joe Biden said famously a while ago that America is back. Let’s hope it means that America is once again back rewarding those who improve human rights for girls and back to punishing those who worsen human rights for girls.

Afghanistan deserves a better future. The West’s support for anti-Soviet jihad was financed through Mujahideen activities with the help of Pakistan. It disastrously created Al Qaida. The West’s support for Pakistan after 9/11 bolstered the Taliban, who in turn ousted NATO. Even the Saudis have started distancing themselves from Pakistan and have cancelled their loans, but when will the turning point come for the West to rethink its South-Asia strategy?

Linkedin
Disclaimer

Views expressed above are the author's own.

END OF ARTICLE