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ISLAMABAD: Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has said Washington must get over the shock of “defeat” in Afghanistan and send aid or face the collapse of a country which would become a haven for Daesh militants, Middle East Eye said in an interview published on Monday.
Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August, Khan has encouraged the world to engage the insurgent group’s interim government and provide economic support, although it has stopped short of backing recognition — a step opposed by the United States.
“Unless America takes the lead, we are worried that there will be chaos in Afghanistan and we [Pakistan] will be most affected by that,” Khan said in an interview in Islamabad.
He added that the US had no other option but to do everything it could to support a stable government in Afghanistan because the Taliban were the only option to fight Daesh in the region – and prevent the ascendency of hard-line elements within the Taliban’s own ranks.
Daesh’s regional affiliate in Afghanistan, known as Daesh-Khorosan, has long been a Taliban rival.
The Taliban leadership has been grappling with a growing threat from the local Daesh affiliate as the group has ramped up attacks to weaken the Taliban, including two recent deadly bombings in Kabul.
Daesh has also declared war on Afghanistan’s minority Shiites and has taken responsibility for some of the worst attacks targeting the community, including attacks on their mosques in Kabul and the western province of Herat.
“The world must engage with Afghanistan because if it pushes it away, within the Taliban movement there are hard-liners, and it could easily go back to the Taliban of 2000 and that would be a disaster,” Khan said, referring to the previous government of the Taliban from 1996 to 2001 when it imposed a harsh rule on Afghanistan, including keeping women out of public life.
The Taliban is still on the US Treasury sanctions designation list, effectively preventing the group from accessing more than $9 billion in US-held assets belonging to the Afghan Central Bank.
With half the population already below the poverty line, and 75 percent of the national budget dependent on foreign aid, sanctioning the Taliban would lead to a humanitarian disaster soon, Khan said.
“If they leave Afghanistan like this, my worry is that Afghanistan could easily revert back to 1989 when the Soviets and US left and over 200,000 Afghans died in the chaos,” he said, referring to the civil war that followed the Soviet retreat from the country.
Khan said he had warned President Joe Biden, John Kerry and Harry Reid – then all senators — in 2008 that they were creating a “quagmire” in Afghanistan for which there was no military solution but they did not listen.
Two years later General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, then Pakistan’s chief of army staff, delivered the same message to US President Barack Obama.
“But unfortunately, they were led by their [US] generals. And do you know what generals always say: give us more troops and more time,” Khan said.
He said he was relieved the Taliban takeover did not result in a “bloodbath” in Afghanistan and was working with neighboring states, notably Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, which have sizeable ethnic minorities inside Afghanistan, to encourage the Taliban to widen representation.
“They need an inclusive government because Afghanistan is a diverse society,” Khan said.
When asked about the Taliban’s rights record, particularly with regards to women, Khan said the group should be given time: “The best way is to incentivise them to walk the talk [on rights] ... But if you force them, I would imagine the nature of the people is such that they will push back and it would be counterproductive.”
Speaking about talks with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TPP), often called the Pakistan Taliban, an insurgent group indigenous to Pakistan, Khan said the TTP consisted of 50 groups and his government was trying to reconcile those elements who were willing to talk.
“Now we are trying to talk to those who can be reconciled because it’s from a position of strength. I always believed all insurgencies eventually end up on the dialogue table, like the IRA [Irish Republican Army] for instance,” he said, referring to the Northern Irish peace deal.
“We now have to talk to those we can reconcile and [persuade to] give up their arms and live as normal citizens.”