Pakistan is ready to partner with the United States toward establishing peace in Afghanistan but would not provide its bases for any military action into the Afghan territory, prime minister Imran Khan has said.
Khan’s remarks first aired in Axios on HBO interview and elaborated in The Washington Post, reiterated his long-held view that there is no military solution to the longstanding Afghan conflict.
“Absolutely not,” he responded when asked in an Axios HBO interview whether his government would be amenable to allowing the United States to have bases for counterterrorism actions in Afghanistan once the American forces leave by September 11 this year.
“We simply cannot afford this. We have already paid too heavy a price,” Khan explained in piece in The Washington Post on Tuesday, writing that the country had lost 70,000 lives to the war on terror launched in the wake of 9/11 terror attacks in New York, and the Pentagon outside of capital Washington D.C.
President Joe Biden, who has announced plans for completing U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan at the end of the two-decades-old conflict, will host Afghan leaders at the White House later this week.
With no political solution on cards, several regional countries and Western experts fear Afghanistan might descend into another civil war. President Asrhaf Ghani has shown no inclination to share power with warring Afghan Taliban, who are running amok across several places as the U.S. pullout continues.
One option that some strategists suggest is that the U.S. maintain ability to strike terror targets in Afghanistan post-withdrawal.
Making case against a scenario where Pakistan hosts U.S. military, the Pakistani prime minister wrote in the Post piece:
“If Pakistan were to agree to host U.S. bases, from which to bomb Afghanistan, and an Afghan civil war ensued, Pakistan would be targeted for revenge by terrorists again,” he said.
Khan said his country would avoid another conflict having already paid a high human and economic cost to the tune of billions of dollars.
But he underscored that Pakistan and the U.S. have the same interest in Afghanistan — a political settlement, stability, economic development and the denial of any haven for terrorists.
Khan said Pakistan is no more interested in playing a game of favorites in Afghanistan, and that Islamabad will accept any government that enjoys backing of the Afghans.
“We oppose any military takeover of Afghanistan, which will lead only to decades of civil war, as the Taliban cannot win over the whole of the country, and yet must be included in any government for it to succeed.”
He candidly admitted that Pakistan made a mistake by choosing between warring Afghan parties, but now Islamabad has no favourites and will work with any government that enjoys the confidence of the Afghan people.
“History proves that Afghanistan can never be controlled from the outside,” he wrote in the piece during which he questioned as to how could airbases help the U.S. succeed in Afghanistan a goal which remained elusive for twenty years of international presence in the landlocked country.
