Pakistan laments lack of US recognition for Islamabad’s support in Afghanistan

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has said the United States has not recognized Islamabad’s support and assistance in dealing with turmoil in neighboring Afghanistan since the Taliban took over power.
The capture of Kabul on August 15 propelled the US and allied forces to mount a massive weeks long effort to ferry foreign nationals and tens of thousands of vulnerable Afghans out of the country. Thousands of people were evacuated by Pakistan’s national flag carrier and many more through its borders with landlocked Afghanistan.
“Pakistan extended full help to the United States in negotiations with the Taliban and during the withdrawal of its troops and people from Afghanistan,” Qureshi said on Wednesday at a news briefing organized by the Foreign Press Association in New York.
The foreign minister is in the United States for the UN General Assembly.
“United States has not recognized Pakistan’s supportive role during Afghanistan-related developments,” he told reporters, adding that Pakistan would continue to assist in the distribution of humanitarian aid in Afghanistan and was ready to become a hub in this regard. 
Pakistan has been sending consignments of food and medicine supplies to Afghanistan since the fall of Kabul and facilitated the evacuation of 16,000 diplomats, foreigners, aid workers, journalists and vulnerable Afghans. 
A day earlier, Qureshi said that Pakistan wanted to “break out of the cyclical pattern” that had long defined its ties with the United States and build a more broad-based and multidimensional relationship. 
In his keynote address at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), he said an economically strong Pakistan would be “an anchor of stability” in the region, which had suffered because of 40 years of conflict in Afghanistan. 
Islamabad wanted to work with the US in areas that would create jobs and economic prosperity on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and help the Afghan people rebuild their country, he added. 
Allies in the war on terror, Pakistan and the US have had a complicated relationship, bound for decades by Washington’s dependence on Pakistan to supply its troops in Afghanistan, but plagued by accusations Islamabad was playing a “double game.” 
Tensions grew over the last decade over US complaints that the Afghan Taliban and Haqqani network, which targeted American troops in Afghanistan, were allowed to shelter on the Pakistani soil. Pakistan denies the charge and has long insisted that the US view Islamabad beyond the lens of Kabul.