Secretary General Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Senator Farhatullah Babar has said that the Prime Minister's recent remarks describing the current Afghan government a hurdle to peace is a reiteration of undeclared state policy of not accepting any Kabul government that is perceived to be India-friendly.
He said this while addressing a seminar on Afghan Peace Talks under the auspices of the Shaheed Bhutto Foundation here at National Press Club on Thursday.
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 lies at the root of the problem, he said.
"Our Afghan policy is based on zero sum game with India that must change," he said, adding, "We exaggerated India's 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 the Afghan government was similar to Pakistan's refusal in the past to talk directly with the Kabul government and Special Envoy UN Diego Cardovez shuttling between Kabul and Islamabad.
"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. 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," he added.
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. If it failed in Pakistan, it will fail in Afghanistan too, he added.
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," he said, adding Pakistan must review its India-centric policy in dealing with Afghanistan.
He said that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in his book "If I Am Assassinated" had said when armies expand three consequences follow; they expand their territory or they may cut their size or they continue the status quo till they crumble under their own weight.
Bhutto said that expansion is no option because there is no space and cutting size will be stoutly resisted and so Pakistan is condemned to continue the status quo.
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