Senior leader of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Senator Farhatullah Babar on Thursday
ISLAMABAD: Senior leader of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Senator Farhatullah Babar on Thursday has said that Prime Minister’s recent remarks describing the current Afghan government a hurdle to peace was a reiteration of undeclared state policy to not accept any Kabul government perceived to be India-friendly.
Addressing a seminar on Afghan Peace Talks under the auspices of the Shaheed Bhutto Foundation in the National Press Club (NPC) Islamabad on Thursday, Farhatullah Babar said that a fragmented Afghanistan with a weak, Pakistan-installed regime that is not too friendly with India is what Islamabad has been seeking for decades and lay at the root of the problem.
Our Afghan policy is based on zero sum game with India that must change, he said adding that we exaggerated India threat to create justification for Taliban. He recalled that in the 1980s also Pakistan insisted that the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) government be replaced by a neutral government.
He said that the proxy Taliban’s refusal to talk peace with Afghan government was similar to Pakistan’s refusal in the past to talk directly with the Kabul government and the UN special envoy Diego Cardovez shuttling between Kabul and Islamabad.
Farhatullah Babar said, “When finally the talks did take place in Switzerland, they were “proximity talks”, where Cardovez ridiculously shuttled from room to room because we did not want direct talks.”
He said that the proximity talks led to Geneva Accords, Soviet withdrawal followed by civil war, endless bloodshed and a huge geopolitical chaos. There is a danger that the result of a peace imposed on Afghanistan without the Afghan government will also be chaos.
Senior leader of PPP said that a ‘minus one’ formula has been at work in Pakistan for quite some time. By seeking to keep Ashraf Ghani government out of talks shows that a ‘minus one’ formula is also being tested in Afghanistan, he said adding that if it failed in Pakistan it will fail in Afghanistan too.
He warned that a precipitous withdrawal of the US without a successful intra Afghan dialogue might lead to disastrous consequences for Pakistan and the region.
A stable Afghanistan is in the interest of Pakistan and the region but in our national security calculus, a weak, India-averse Afghanistan, is more important than a stable Afghanistan, Farhatullah Babar stated. Pakistan must review its India centric policy in dealing with Afghanistan, he added.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in his book “If I am assassinated” had said that when armies expand three consequences follow. One, they expand their territory or they may cut their size or they continue the status quo till they crumble under their own weight.
“Bhutto clarified that expansion was no option because there is no space and cutting size will be stoutly resisted and so Pakistan is condemned to continue the status quo,” he said.
The seminar was also addressed by MNA Mohsin Dawar, ex MNA Bushra Gohar and journalist Salim Safi.
