US finds Pakistan useful only to clean up mess in Afghanistan: Imran

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan accused the United States of seeing Pakistan as useful only in the context of the “mess” it is leaving behind in Afghanistan after 20 years of fighting.

Washington has been pressing Pakistan to use its influence over the Taliban to broker an elusive peace deal as negotiations between the insurgents and Afghan government have stalled, and violence in Afghanistan has escalated sharply.

“Pakistan is just considered only to be useful in the context of somehow settling this mess which has been left behind after 20 years of trying to find a military solution when there was not one,” the prime minister told foreign journalists late Wednesday night at his home in Islamabad.

The United States will pull out its military by August 31, 20 years after toppling the Taliban government in 2001. But, as the United States leaves, the Taliban today control more territory than at any point since then.

“The hasty way in which the Americans left, if they wanted a political settlement then common sense dictates that [you negotiate] from a position of strength,” he said, adding that the US was now blaming Pakistan when they no longer had any leverage.

Kabul and several Western governments claim Pakistan’s alleged support for the insurgent group allowed it to weather the war.

“They somehow think Pakistan has supernatural powers [and that] we are a superpower plus which has such power that the 60,000 to 70,000 Taliban can take on 300,000 Afghan government troops with aircraft and modern weapons and somehow we have the power to make them (Taliban) win.”

The charge of supporting the Taliban despite being a US ally has long been a sore point between Washington and Islamabad. Pakistan denies supporting the Taliban.

Imran said Islamabad was not taking sides in Afghanistan. “Pakistan should work with any government that is selected by the people of Afghanistan,” the premier added.

“I think that the Americans have decided that India is their strategic partner now, and I think that’s why there’s a different way of treating Pakistan now,” he said.

Pakistan and India are archrivals and have fought three wars. The two share frosty ties and currently have minimal diplomatic relations.

A political settlement in Afghanistan was looking difficult under current conditions, he added.

He said he tried to persuade Taliban leaders when they were visiting Pakistan to reach a settlement.

“The condition is that as long as Ashraf Ghani is there, we [Taliban] are not going to talk to the Afghan government,” Imran said, quoting the Taliban leaders as telling him.

Peace talks between the Taliban, who view Ghani and his government as US puppets, and a team of Kabul-nominated Afghan negotiators started last September but have made no substantive progress.

Representatives of a number of countries, including the United States, are currently in Qatar’s capital of Doha talking to both sides in a last-ditch push for a ceasefire.

US forces have continued to use airstrikes to support Afghan forces against Taliban advances, but it remains unclear if such support will continue after the August 31 deadline.

“As far as I know after [August] 31, the Americans are going to stop all sorts of [operations], even air attacks in Afghanistan,” PM Imran said on the occasion.

Imran said Pakistan had “made it very clear” that it does not want any American military bases in Pakistan after US forces exit Afghanistan.

“You ask me whether we are worried?” the PM said in response to a question about the potential fallout. “We are [definitely] worried because the direct impact of descending into a prolonged civil war […] the country that will be most affected after Afghanistan will be Pakistan.”

He explained that the Taliban were a Pakhtun-majority group and hence there would be spillover effects in Pakistan’s Pakhtun majority areas.

“It happened in 2003/2004 that our Pakhtun areas reacted to what was happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan lost 70,000 people in that because we supported the Americans.

“So there is a likelihood that we will again have problems in our Pakhtun areas,” the premier explained. He added that close to three million people had also been internally displaced from the tribal areas.

“We have a larger Pakhtun population here in Pakistan than in Afghanistan and they’re probably the most xenophobic people on earth. They fight each other normally but when it’s an outside [force], they all get together.”

Responding to a question on the extent of Pakistani influence over the Taliban, the premier said that even back in 2001, when Pakistan had recognised the Taliban government and was “most influential”, the group had still refused to hand over Osama bin Laden.

“So even then Pakistan’s influence was not all-encompassing.”

Pakistan’s entry in the US-led war on terror in 2001 led to a “civil war in the tribal areas”, the prime minister said, explaining that as a result, the militant organisations formed to wage Jihad against the Soviet Union turned against Pakistan.

He also said that anyone who thought Afghanistan could be controlled from outside “doesn’t understand the character of the Afghan people”, adding that the people could not be made “puppets”.

“Hence it’s in Pakistan’s interest that there is a political settlement and all factions come [together to form] a government that represents everyone.”

“I keep hearing that President Biden hasn’t called me. It’s his business. It’s not like I am waiting for any phone call,” he said in response to a question from a Reuters journalist.

“The president of the United States hasn’t spoken to the prime minister of such an important country who the US itself says is make-or-break in some cases, in some ways, in Afghanistan — we struggle to understand the signal, right?” Yusuf had told The Financial Times in an interview.

“We’ve been told every time that … [the phone call] will happen, it’s technical reasons or whatever. But frankly, people don’t believe it,” he had said. “If a phone call is a concession, if a security relationship is a concession, Pakistan has options,” he had added, refusing to elaborate.