The US cannot envision success in Afghanistan without cooperation from Pakistan, a top American commander based in Kabul has told lawmakers.
“I find it difficult to envision success in the region without cooperation of Pakistan and without an effective relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan,” General Joseph Dunford, Commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, told lawmakers during a Congressional hearing.
“Over the past year I’ve been encouraged on a couple of fronts. One is I believe that Pakistan also recognises the existential threat of extremism to their own security, and they also recognise that it’s not in their best interest to have anything other than a stable, secure and unified Afghanistan,” he said.
Dunford said that since August the heads of two states had met four times, which was very positive.
“The two areas that they have identified for cooperation I think are important to point out. One is to have a common definition of extremism and to cooperate on dealing with extremism. And the other is to come up with a broader border management framework that would address the political issues, the economic issues as well as the security issues between the two countries,” Dunford said.
“Our role is to work on developing a constructive military-to-military relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan,” he said.
Furthermore, the United States is very carefully watching the peace talks between the Pakistani government and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Dunford said.
“We’re watching that very carefully. To be honest, we don’t have any insight into exactly the status of those discussions. What we have seen recently is continued violence by the TTP – the Pakistani Taliban,” Dunford said.
“We’ve also seen some limited military operations, particularly in the North Waziristan area against the TTP,” Dunford said in response to a question.
“But what we know is what you know, and that is that (Pakistan) Prime Minister (Nawaz) Sharif and the leadership in Pakistan are committed to try to find some peaceful resolution and that’s certainly in Pakistan as well as in Afghanistan – what needs to happen in the long term,” he said.
