As the world wearily watches developments in Afghanistan, a top US senator has drawn attention to the importance of Pakistan being a critical part of a sustainable solution to the Afghan predicament.
“Any sustainable solution in Afghanistan must include Pakistan,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said in a Twitter post.
Graham, who has traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan several times since the US invasion of the country nearly twenty years ago, called the region “very complicated” and “dangerous”.
His comments came after a conversation with Pakistan’s ambassador in Washington D.C. Dr. Asad Majeed Khan.
“Very much appreciate the efforts of the Pakistani government to assist with the evacuation of U.S. citizens, our allies, and other nations,” he wrote.
Since the Afghan Taliban’s takeover of Kabul, Pakistan has so far evacuated a total of 7,629 people of different nationalities through air and land routes and continues to evacuate diplomatic staff and foreign nationals including the personnel of international institutions, who were based in the landlocked neighboring country
Graham also referred to the challenges of TTP militancy facing Pakistan and the nuclear-armed South Asian nation’s key importance to regional stability.
“We all must remember Pakistan is a nuclear-armed nation,” he observed, adding that “there is a Pakistan version of the Taliban who wishes (to) topple the Pakistani government and military.”
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, said after visiting Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Iran that he saw Afghan neighbors’ approach towards the turmoil-hit Afghanistan as “realistic”.
After his whirlwind diplomatic travels to the neighboring capitals, the foreign minister said in a statement: “I had the opportunity to learn about their views on Afghanistan during my four-nation tour.”
“The entire region will benefit if there is peace and stability in Afghanistan,” Qureshi added.
According to the Foreign Ministry statement, he noted that the Taliban leadership was also in contact with all the countries.
“The people of Afghanistan have been dealing with wars for decades and want peace. They are suffering for the mistakes made in the past. We need to learn from the mistakes made in the past so that they are not repeated,” he said, without elaborating.
If there is a positive message coming from Afghanistan, it should be encouraged, Qureshi said, adding that isolating Afghanistan would be detrimental to all.
The minister said the world was “expressing confidence” in Pakistan, adding that the country’s role as a mediator in Afghanistan had also been praised.
“Pakistan is helping evacuate the diplomatic staff of several countries from Afghanistan,” he said. “Pakistan International Airlines has played an important role in this regard.”
