ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan said Pakistan is pushing for a political settlement in Afghanistan before foreign troops leave later this year, to reduce the risk of civil war in its western neighbor.
The United States has said it will withdraw all its troops from Afghanistan on Sept. 11 after a two-decade presence.
More than 20 allied countries plan to follow suit.
“There is a lot of fear right now in Pakistan and I assure you that we are trying our level best that there is some sort of political settlement before the Americans leave,” Khan told Reuters on Friday at his official residence in Islamabad.
Violence in Afghanistan has risen sharply since the troop withdrawal announcement, with the insurgent Taliban resisting pressure from Washington and its allies to agree to a political understanding leading to a peace deal.
“Since the moment the Americans gave a date, of when they were going to leave Afghanistan ... the Taliban feel they have won the war,” Khan said, adding it was not going to be easy to get concessions from the Taliban after the US decision.
Khan said Pakistan would suffer the most, after Afghanistan itself, if there was civil war and a refugee crisis.
“And then there would be pressure on us to jump in and become a part of it,” Khan said.
He said his government had changed Pakistan’s decades-long policy of pushing for “strategic depth” in Afghanistan to ensure that there was a friendly government there.
“Any Afghan government chosen by the people is who Pakistan should deal with,” Khan said, adding that Pakistan “should not try to do any manipulation in Afghanistan.”
Pakistan has long been accused of harboring leaders and fighters of the Taliban, whom Islamabad helped to power in 1996, even as the insurgent group fought US-led foreign troops.
Khan said a lot depended on US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, with Pakistan’s and Afghanistan’s help, to carve out a settlement to avoid more bloodshed.
PM Khan seeks Afghan settlement before foreign troop pullout
https://arab.news/9mphx
PM Khan seeks Afghan settlement before foreign troop pullout
- The Pakistani prime minister says ‘there is a lot of fear’ in his country regarding a possible civil war in Afghanistan and a refugee crisis
- Khan says his government has changed Pakistan’s decades-long policy of ‘strategic depth’ in its neighborhood, will work with any government in Kabul
Pakistani students stuck in Afghanistan permitted to go home
- The border between the countries has been shut since Oct. 12
- Worries remain for students about return after the winter break
JALALABAD: After three months, some Pakistani university students who were stuck in Afghanistan due to deadly clashes between the neighboring countries were “permitted to go back home,” Afghan border police said Monday.
“The students from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (northwest Pakistan) who were stuck on this side of the border, only they were permitted to cross and go to their homes,” said Abdullah Farooqi, Afghan border police spokesman.
The border has “not reopened” for other people, he said.
The land border has been shut since October 12, leaving many people with no affordable option of making it home.
“I am happy with the steps the Afghan government has taken to open the road for us, so that my friends and I will be able to return to our homes” during the winter break, Anees Afridi, a Pakistani medical student in eastern Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province, told AFP.
However, worries remain for the hundreds of students about returning to Afghanistan after the break ends.
“If the road is still closed from that side (Pakistan), we will be forced to return to Afghanistan for our studies by air.”
Flights are prohibitively expensive for most, and smuggling routes also come at great risk.
Anees hopes that by the time they return for their studies “the road will be open on both sides through talks between the two governments.”
