Problems between Pakistan and Afghanistan
ON 02 December, an attempt was made to target Pakistan’s ambassador to Kabul, Obaidur Rehman Nizamani, while he was taking a routine walk in the embassy compound.
An embassy guard was injured in the attack, whose condition is said to be out of danger, while ISKP claimed responsibility for the attack.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed in a tweet on Monday that the person who opened fire on the Pakistani embassy, is an ISKP operative and a foreign national, has been arrested.
According to him, “Investigations have revealed that the attack on the embassy was carried out jointly by ISKP and the insurgents, with some foreign groups behind it, and the aim was to create mistrust between the two brotherly countries.
” The statement of the Taliban spokesperson has come out on the occasion when the diplomat at the Pakistani embassy, Obaidul Rehman, has returned to Islamabad from Kabul.
According to the international point of view, an attack on the diplomatic staff of any country in another country is a major event.
Of course, Pakistani diplomats are not ordinary people and their loss could have meant severe tension between the two countries and dangerous consequences, which would have had to be borne by Kabul in Pakistan.
It should be noted that currently the most effective embassy in Afghanistan is that of Pakistan, which provides the highest number of visas to Afghan citizens compared to the rest of the world.
Security for foreign diplomats in Afghanistan is necessarily weak or non-existent as the Pakistani embassy is located in the middle of the high diplomatic area of Kabul.
Earlier, there was a suicide attack on the Russian embassy in the nearby area, in which 20 people were killed and dozens were injured.
Now, regardless of how weak this security is and how much attention the Afghan government is paying to it, the real defendant is that the anti-Pakistan narrative is intensifying day by day in Afghanistan and the Taliban themselves are convinced of this narrative.
No one can doubt that Pakistan has sacrificed a lot for Afghans in the last five decades but Afghans are rejecting these sacrifices as they consider Pakistan’s actions as interference in Afghanistan’s internal affairs.
Afghan ministers often say in their speeches that the Afghan people think it is time for Pakistan to stop interfering in Afghanistan’s internal affairs and hand over Afghanistan’s politics to Afghans.
A Pakistani journalist friend of mine who works for a foreign channel in Kabul says that “the Taliban, who are seen patrolling the streets of Kabul, have also started to show a harshness towards Pakistan in their behaviour”.
The Taliban may have forgotten that for decades they had the help and support of Pakistan from which they gained power.
Now if they have come to power, they can also go from power and if this happens this time, maybe they will get power for the third time even in their dreams.
The trust-building between the Afghan Mujahideen and Pakistani agencies that was fostered during the Soviet war in the 80s has certainly changed, but it is also a fact that Pakistan has always acted very patiently in the matter of Afghanistan.
There is no doubt that until one sees his own weakness, he keeps blaming others. The situation on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan is also changing rapidly.
Incidents of cutting barbed wire by the Afghan Taliban continue to emerge everyday because they are still calling it the Durand Line instead of the international border.
Last month, a tense situation arose on the Chaman border when a firing incident took place on Pakistani security personnel posted at the border gate from the Afghan border, in which one officer was killed and two others were injured.
After that, Pakistan closed the border, which has now been reopened after a month. According to a conservative estimate, about 15,000 to 20,000 people cross this border every day.
Earlier too, there was firing on Pakistani security forces in Kurram district from Afghan border, in which a security officer was killed, while similar incidents have been happening before and Pakistan was attacked several times from Afghan territory.
At a time when the Taliban government has not been recognized by any country in the world, Afghanistan’s assets of more than nine billion dollars are frozen and conflicts with Pakistan are also intensifying day-by-day, so in such a situation, even if the Taliban government does not remember Pakistan’s previous sacrifices, it should have at least acted according to its circumstances.
The Afghan Taliban has adopted a policy of hatred towards Pakistan, which is very strange because no other country has helped the Taliban as much as Pakistan has in the past few decades.
In the case of TTP also, the Afghan government has had the same attitude towards Pakistan.
Although Pakistan has warned the Afghan Taliban many times not to allow its territory to be used against Pakistan, but this did not have any deep impact on the Afghan Taliban.
There is no doubt that the Afghan Taliban have tried to reconcile between the Pakistani government and the TTP, but they have never been harsh with the TTP.
Almost all the central leadership of TTP currently resides in Kunar, Kandahar and other areas of Afghanistan and terror plans are made from there for Pakistan, but the Afghan Taliban has kept quiet about it.
Similarly, BLA terrorists are present in the posh areas of Kandahar, Ayno Maina and Nimroz province, and they are spreading terrorism in Pakistan, but the Afghan government has kept a criminal silence on it.
Apart from this, in the new map that has been prepared by Afghan Taliban in recent days, Afghanistan, Pakistani Kashmir and Balochistan have been shown as one country and it has been named Greater Afghanistan.
All these issues are clearly showing the mind-set of Afghans and it is clear that they have started hating existence of Pakistan and they are unable to figure out how to attack Pakistan.
However, we still believe that we should not hate Afghans instead of hating us. Afghans are our brothers, we have helped them immensely before and will continue to do so.
The only thing is to remove their misconception whether it is about their mentality or any other problem of theirs.
Pakistan’s military leadership has changed and it is hoped that the new army chief, General Asim Munir, will formulate a policy that will benefit both countries. Pakistan Zindabad
—The writer is associated with the news reporting department in Islamabad for a long time and working for an international news agency.
