Reaffirming its readiness to assist Afghanistan’s national reconciliation process, Pakistan has cautioned Afghans that those attempting to sabotage and poison Pakistan-Afghan relations were not their friends.
“We have declared that Afghanistan’s enemies are also enemies of Pakistan,” Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi told the UN Security Council on Thursday. “We should both be clear who these enemies are,” the Pakistani envoy said, without elaborating.
“Those who are working overtime to sabotage and poison Pak-Afghan relations are no friends of Afghanistan,” Dr Lodhi added, while participating in a Council debate on the situation in Afghanistan.
Reconciliation and dialogue has to be between the Afghans themselves, she said, stressing that external parties cannot impose a solution.
At the request of the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Pakistan had facilitated dialogue between Kabul and the Afghan Taliban, which had later ruptured because of “certain developments.”
“These developments led to the rupture of what could have been a promising peace process,” the Pakistani envoy said, adding that the Afghan Taliban were unable to return to the table, and attacks inside Afghanistan increased. In recent weeks, she noted, the security situation in Afghanistan had deteriorated significantly and Pakistan condemned all terrorist violence there.
“But we were saddened when some in Afghanistan chose to lay the blame for escalating violence on Pakistan,” Ambassador Lodhi said in a serious tone. “Our efforts to encourage the Taliban leaders to revive the dialogue should not be misconstrued as any form of endorsement for their revived violence, following the scuttling of the intra-Afghan talks,” she said, noting vast uncontrolled areas in Afghanistan from where such violence emanated against both Afghan targets and against Pakistan’
“My country’s priority was, and remains, to defeat the terrorists it is confronting,” the Pakistani envoy told delegates sitting around the Council’s horseshoe table. Those terrorists were responsible for hundreds of attacks against civilians and security targets in which over 64,000 have been killed, including innocent children at a Peshawar school.
“Our military campaign, Zarb e Azb, and Pakistan’s multi-dimensional National Action Plan, have degraded these terrorist groups and flushed out and eliminated those trying to use our soil for their violent agendas,” she said, adding that their infrastructure in North Waziristan and adjacent areas has been destroyed, and the few remaining hideouts in Shawal valley and other isolated redoubts were under consistent attack.
Pakistan, the ambassador said, believed that continued conflict in Afghanistan was not in its national interest. Peace in Afghanistan, and cooperation with Kabul, would enable the two countries to fully defeat their common threat from violent groups, and pave the way for the voluntary return of millions of Afghan refugees and towards implementing the ambitious plans for regional development and integration.
“We seek peace, friendship, and cooperation between Pakistan and Afghanistan,” the ambassador said. “Mutual respect for each other’s national interests and sensitivities must be the bedrock of our future relationship,” she said.
