Washington DC: The deadly attacks in Afghanistan by Pakistan based terror groups after the recent peace agreement between the U.S. and the Taliban has revealed that Washington is losing the Afghan war to Pakistan, says an American expert.
Afghanistan suffered two deadly suicide attacks on May 12. The first one hit the Dasht-e-Barchi maternity hospital run by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in Kabul that killed at least 14, including 2 newborn babies and the other was at a funeral of a local police commander in Khewa district of Nangarhar, killing 24.
Both attacks were aimed at innocent civilians, the majority of who were women and children.
While no group has yet claimed responsibility, the Afghan National Security Adviser Hamdullah Mohib hinted Pakistan based terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba responsible for the attacks.
Roland Jacquard, the Chairman of Roland Jacquard Global Security Consultancy (GJGSC) said, “In 2019, a report submitted by the UN Analytical Support and Sanctions Committee, which oversees sanctions on the Taliban, said Lashkar-e-Taiba continues to act as a facilitator in recruitment and financial support activities in Afghanistan”.
The report quoted Afghan officials as saying that some 500 LeT fighters are active in Kunar and Nangarhar provinces alone.
These two incidents coupled with the attack on Afghan soldiers in Helmand province on May 4 has laid bare the frivolity of the much publicised conditional peace agreement between the US and the Taliban in Doha on February 29 this year that called for the withdrawal of foreign troops in 14 months of the Taliban upheld the terms of the agreement.
However, this should not have come as a surprise for those who have observed the Afghan Pak region for the last few decades.
Roland Jacquard said, “In fact, the U.S. impatient to sign a peace deal with the Taliban and exit Afghanistan, made the same mistakes that it had repeatedly committed in the past 18 years, since overthrowing the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001.”
He added, “The first mistake was to publicise its desperation to depart from Afghanistan and then initiate negotiations with a section of the Taliban at a time when the group was in a position of strength, holding sway over more than 14 per cent of the districts of Afghanistan.”
Further, accepting the Taliban at the negotiating table and leaving the Afghan government out of the process, gave the Taliban a political legitimacy and confirmed them as a de facto power.
Ronald said that the U.S. made a mistake to repose faith in Pakistan as a mediator to facilitate the deal with the Taliban.
“It is no secret that Afghanistan has been important for Pakistan, as it provides the country strategic depth vis-a-vis its rival and neighbour, India. A friendly government in Afghanistan, as was before the Western forces arrived in the country in 2001, is something that Pakistan has been hoping to restore”, he said.
The Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani Network, that has been the linchpin of Pakistan’s spy agency, the ISI since the 1970s, were provided with a safe haven in Pakistan since 2001. In doing so, for nearly two decades, Pakistan repeatedly sabotaged the US and NATO’s war on terror.
Around 1100 NATO and 2400 US soldiers died in Afghanistan over the last 18 years, many because Pakistan harboured Taliban forces.
Ronald believes that the US administration under Donald Trump, after initially being vocal about its frustrations regarding Pakistan’s duplicitous policy of sponsoring terror groups while claiming to be its partner in the war against terror and suspending the disbursement of the Coalition Support Fund (CSF) to Pakistan from 2018 onward, did a complete volte-face in 2019.
“By bringing Pakistan to the high table to negotiate with the Taliban, the US not only assisted the country’s long-standing plan to legitimise the Taliban as a political entity, but it also laid the first bricks to pave way for restoring its pre-2001 influence in Afghanistan”, said Ronald. (ANI)
