AMSTERDAM: Asserting that Pakistan’s main aim in Afghanistan is to install an interim government that includes the Taliban, a European-based think tank said that the terror group would not be what it is today without Pakistan’s unerring backing and support.
An academic research paper titled ‘Regional Powers and Post-NATO Afghanistan’, release by the NATO Defense College (NDC) stated that “After a US/NATO withdrawal, there is a risk that the Afghan conflict could enter a new, more deadly phase as a regionalized proxy conflict.
Regional states are already seeking influence in a post-NATO, post-US Afghanistan by supporting local powerbrokers and militant factions”, said the European Foundation for South Asian Studies (EFSAS).
The paper argues, “Pakistan’s main aim in Afghanistan is to install an interim government which includes the Taliban. However, Islamabad is against Taliban rule.
Pakistan considers a Taliban dominated or militarily enforced Taliban regime as not conducive to its national interests for several reasons”.
The NDC paper observed that Pakistan “has a long history of using militant proxies to challenge India’s military superiority in the region – particularly in Kashmir and Afghanistan. It maintained support for the Taliban and related factions such as the Haqqani network after 2001 to counter what it viewed as a pro-Indian stance from Afghanistan’s new leaders”.
The paper also refuted Pakistani allegations that India was using Afghan territory to back anti-Pakistani militant groups by asserting that “India has not yet been drawn into direct proxy warfare with Pakistan in Afghanistan instead continuing to promote close ties with the Afghan government”.
As Michael Blake, professor of philosophy, public policy, and governance at the University of Washington wrote on July 21 in an article titled ‘US can’t shirk moral responsibility in leaving Afghanistan’, the human rights violations that are likely to follow the NATO withdrawal “are rightly attributed to the United States”.
Blake argued that the US must work to “ensure that it avoids entering such morally tragic situations in the future” and that the US, in future conflicts, takes account of what philosopher Brian Orend calls ‘justice after war’ and enters such conflicts only with some clarity about how and when to end them well. All that Blake said for the US is equally applicable to NATO.
“The last time the Pakistan – Taliban combine held sway over Afghanistan it had not ended well for NATO, which is why it must take great care to accurately assess the unfolding ground situation there and to dispassionately gauge the implications,” the think tank added. (ANI)
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