[
By Pamela Constable and Shaiq Hussain
 |
|
Pakistani
Prime Minister Imran Khan meets with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani
in
Islamabad, Pakistan, June 27, 2019. (Press Information Department
Handout
via REUTERS)
|
ISLAMABAD,
Pakistan — Afghan President
Ashraf Ghani has been called many things by his critics at home — arrogant and
impatient, isolated and out of touch with ordinary people. But he surely
deserves points for diplomatic perseverance.
On Thursday, for the first time in three
years, Ghani flew into Pakistan, a neighboring country he has denounced
repeatedly as fomenting terrorist attacks in Afghanistan. Looking spry in a
blue pinstriped suit, he beamed gamely after being greeted on the tarmac by a
mid-level government commerce adviser.
He met first with Pakistani Prime Minister
Imran Khan, and the two leaders agreed to open a “new chapter of friendship” in
their governments’ long-contentious relations. Later he told a think-tank
audience that it is “crucial” for his government to “normalize relations with
Pakistan” and that the two nations should cooperate to end conflict and develop
a prosperous region.
“You become our partners in peace, and the
rest of the agenda will fall into place,” he said. Both sides should “put an
end to the vicious circle of past blame.” He was scheduled to return to Kabul
on Friday evening.
Ghani’s fence-mending foray came on the eve
of the seventh round of peace talks Saturday between U.S. and Taliban officials
in Qatar, aimed at settling the 18-year Afghan war. Since the talks began in
September, Ghani’s government has been excluded because of Taliban opposition,
and its efforts in April to arrange informal talks between Afghans and the
insurgents were canceled amid disputes over the proposed Kabul delegation.
The U.S.-Taliban talks now appear to be
coming closer to a partial agreement on the gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops,
and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, on an unannounced visit to Kabul on
Tuesday, said he hoped that a full peace deal could be reached by Sept. 1 —
ahead of Afghanistan’s presidential election scheduled for Sept. 28. There are
now about 14,000 U.S. forces in the country.
It was not clear how and when the talks would
broaden to include Afghan participation, but a Taliban spokesman said this week
that once a timetable for troop withdrawal is announced, the talks would
“automatically enter the next stage” and that both can “move forward
simultaneously.” Germany and Norway have been preparing to organize or host
potential talks among Afghans.
Ghani’s arrival followed an unusual visit
here by about 50 Afghan politicians, including several of Ghani’s top rivals in
his bid to seek a second five-year term. The visitors — some of them longtime
critics who had never been to Pakistan — spent two days at a posh mountainside
resort, where Pakistani officials offered assurances that they are keenly
interested in a peaceful, stable Afghanistan.
The
Afghan president’s visit, which he proposed several months ago, was notable
because his previous attempt at rapprochement in mid-2016, when he led a
delegation to Pakistan ahead of planned peace talks, was undercut by the stunning
revelation that longtime Taliban leader Mohammad Omar was dead.
After that, the peace process languished, and
Ghani repeatedly accused Pakistan of protecting anti-Afghan militias, a charge
that has also been made by U.S. officials. In January, he claimed that the “key
to war is in Islamabad, Quetta and Rawalpindi” — three cities known
respectively as Pakistan’s political capital, its exile center for Taliban
leaders and its military headquarters.
Even after the Trump administration launched
U.S.-Taliban talks last fall, many Afghans remain convinced that Pakistan —
which supported Taliban rule in the late 1990s — is a major obstacle to peace
and seeks to keep Afghanistan weak and unstable.
This week, Pakistan seemed determined to persuade
Ghani, his opponents and other influential Afghans that their suspicions are
wrong. At the resort, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told the
political delegation to seize “the new opportunity for peace” through
U.S.-Taliban talks, and he denied that Pakistan seeks to control Afghanistan as
a source of “strategic depth” and a foil against its neighboring rival, India.
“No one in Pakistan subscribes to any notion
of so-called ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan,” Qureshi said. “We must not let
anyone resurrect this dead horse” to “sow seeds of misunderstanding” between
the two countries.
Some of the visitors responded in kind,
especially Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, 71, a longtime fugitive militia leader with
close ties to Pakistan. He returned to Afghanistan in 2017 at Ghani’s
invitation but has since criticized his government and joined a loose formation
of opposition groups.
Hekmatyar, whose participation was
highlighted in the Pakistani media, praised his hosts for their “sincere
efforts” to promote peace. He said the “genuine demands” of the Taliban should
be accepted and that all foreign troops should leave Afghanistan.
Commentators here variously described the
meeting as a “diplomatic coup” or a “political maneuver” by Pakistan, which has
been internationally isolated because of its alleged harboring of anti-Afghan
insurgents. It has also been upstaged in the Afghan peace process by both
Russia and Qatar, which have hosted meetings, talks and conferences with
Taliban leaders.
Rustam Shah Mohmand, a former Pakistani
ambassador to Afghanistan, said Pakistan “wants to strengthen its peace
credentials” and broaden its Afghan contacts beyond the Taliban. With the
meetings in Qatar and Russia, he said, “Pakistan may have felt it is being left
behind and the role it has played for peace is not being recognized.”
Ghani, he said, came to Pakistan “because he
has been moving toward isolation,” too. “He feels he has been left alone by the
U.S., and he is looking for allies. He wants to put pressure on Washington so
he will be kept in the peace process, and to do that he needs an important
country like Pakistan at his side.”
While Ghani drew scant praise here, there
were a few cautiously worded comments about the need for improved ties and
peace talks. The Express Tribune newspaper, in an editorial Friday, said that
“hammering out a sustainable power-sharing formula” in Afghanistan would be
difficult, but that it is “necessary to encourage an intra-Afghan dialogue.”
A “hasty U.S. withdrawal,” the editors
warned, could lead to another Afghan civil war or to political chaos, which
would allow terrorist groups such as the Islamic State to “consolidate their
position” in the region.
Read more:
