Friday November 8, 2019
Kabul (BNA) For decades, Pakistan has played an active however negative role in Afghanistan, a Congressional report has mentioned, asserting that Islamabad desires a weak authorities in Kabul.
In its newest report on Afghanistan, the impartial and bipartisan Congressional Analysis Service (CRS) recognized Pakistan as crucial neighbor of Afghanistan.
Pakistan, it mentioned, has played an active, and by many accounts, a negative role in Afghan affairs for many years.
“Pakistan’s security services maintain ties to Afghan insurgent groups, most notably the Haqqani Network, a US-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) that has become an official, semi-autonomous component of the Taliban,” CRS, which periodically prepares reviews on points of significance for Congressmen for them to make knowledgeable choices, mentioned.
Afghan leaders, together with US army commanders, attribute a lot of the insurgency’s energy and longevity both immediately or not directly to Pakistani help, the report mentioned, including that President Donald Trump has accused Pakistan of “housing the very terrorists that we are fighting”.
US officers have lengthy recognized militant secure havens in Pakistan as a risk to Afghanistan’s safety, although some Pakistani officers dispute the cost, it mentioned
“Pakistan may view a weak and destabilized Afghanistan as preferable to a strong, unified Afghan state (particularly one led by an ethnic Pashtun-dominated government in Kabul; Pakistan has a large and restive Pashtun minority),” the CRS mentioned.
Nevertheless, instability in Afghanistan might rebound to Pakistan’s detriment; Pakistan has struggled with indigenous Islamist militants of its personal, the report added.
Afghanistan-Pakistan relations are additional sophisticated by the presence of over 1,000,000 Afghan refugees in Pakistan, as properly an extended-operating and ethnically tinged dispute over their shared 1,600-mile border.
“Pakistan’s security establishment, fearful of a strategic encirclement by India, apparently continues to view the Afghan Taliban as a relatively friendly and reliable anti-India element in Afghanistan,” the CRS mentioned.
“India’s diplomatic and commercial presence in Afghanistan and US rhetorical support for it exacerbates Pakistani fears of encirclement. Indian interest in Afghanistan stems largely from India’s broader regional rivalry with Pakistan, which impedes Indian efforts to establish stronger and more direct commercial and political relations with central Asia,” the CRS mentioned in its newest report on Afghanistan.
The CRS mentioned rebel and terrorist teams have demonstrated appreciable capabilities in 2019, throwing into sharp aid the daunting safety challenges that the Afghan authorities and its US and worldwide companions face. On the similar time, prospects for a negotiated settlement, pushed by direct US-Taliban talks, are unsure in gentle of the September 2019 cancelation of these negotiations and the Taliban’s continued refusal to speak to the Afghan authorities, it mentioned.
The CRS warned {that a} potential collapse of the Afghan army and/or the federal government that instructions it might have vital implications for the US, significantly given the character of negotiated safety preparations.
Regardless of how doubtless the Taliban can be to realize full management overall and even most of the nation, the breakdown of social order and the fracturing of the nation into fiefdoms managed by paramilitary commanders and their respective militias could also be believable, even possible, the report added.
Timesofindia
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