Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Friday, March 29th, 2024

Pakistan Doesn’t Want to Ease Peace Process in Afghanistan

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  Pakistan Doesn’t Want to Ease Peace  Process in Afghanistan

Afghanistan and Pakistan are close neighbors which their relations have always been undulated, since Pakistan came in existence as an independent country. Durand Line is still a disputed area between the two countries that Afghanistan never wanted to recognize it formally. The last decade of cold war granted Pakistan a dynamic opportunity to become the center of mobilization for Afghan rebels fighting Soviet backed regime in Afghanistan. It was a vital political development in Pakistan’s short history that enabled Islamabad to renew its outworn infrastructures as well to destroy the infrastructures of a neighboring rival country that posed potential threats to Islamabad.
It also granted multi-dimensional privileges to Pakistan that finally turned to a nuclear country and with a possibility to train proxy warriors to be usable in different political climates, especially to minimize Indian threats.
Despite these warriors named terrorist groups after 9/11 but Islamabad never banned their activities in Pakistan as well as never wants to stop financing them until Pakistan and Indian’s tensions over Kashmir remains unsolved.
With a deeper glance to the nature of Pakistan’s long term interference in Afghanistan’s internal affairs, fear from India and challenging India’s influence in Afghanistan are the main factors that instigate Islamabad to seek its strategic depth in Afghanistan and it is only possible via destabilization or establishment of a puppet regime in this country.
President Hamid Karzai and later president Ashraf Ghani made every effort to convince Islamabad to open a new chapter in the two neighbor’s bilateral relations and persuade it to materialize the hope of friendship between the two nations but did not succeed. It means that Islamabad never wants to facilitate any peace process in Afghanistan that culminates in stability and independency in Afghanistan.
On the other hand the bloody conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir is a complicated crisis that its shadow is visible over many other regional conflicts. Pakistan claims Jammu and Kashmir part of its territory that are under the control of Indian army. India also claims ownership over those parts of Kashmir that are under the control of Pakistan armed force.
Tension over Kashmir originates from the early days that Britain colonial left India and Pakistan and India emerged independent countries in the international political geography. Before leaving India, Britain ratified a convention that according to it after its leaving, the continent should be divided in two different independent countries and all princedoms were given freedom to join any of the two countries that they liked and if they did not like to join none of them, they had the right to form independent states. There were almost 600 princedoms that around 500 of them joined India and the rest of them joined Pakistan but the Kashmir princedom remained controversial. Mr. Maharaja who was the latest dynast of Kashmir after 15th august 1947 claimed that he has not made up his mind either to join India or Pakistan based on the convention that Britain had ratified. According to this convention the first decision was the last decision and it was not changeable. The dynast of the Kashmir had signed document of cooperation with both India and Pakistan and had appealed form both of them to let him think properly. Most of Kashmir inhabitants were Muslim but the dynast was non-Muslim. As a result Pakistan was thinking that the non-Muslim dynast of Kashmir will finally join India and therefore mobilized and send a military corps to Kashmir from frontier tribes bordered with Afghanistan to fight Maharaja and capture the valley by force. Maharaja had no any other alternative unless to refer to the Indian authorities and seeks their help to resist against Pakistan, India claimed its readiness to help Maharaja under the condition to join India and finally Maharaja did it. As a result Indian military entered the Kashmir which is still under its control and later Pakistani military also entered the area that culminated in a bloody endless fighting.
Kashmir issue is not the only reason of tension between India and Pakistan, the narrative that Pakistan has of its existence is part of the tension. Pakistan denies its common past with India and part of Pakistani radical Muslims believe that they are bound to Islamize all the continent through using violence. This is also interesting that form Pakistan’s military perspective the hostility between Hindu and Muslim is in perpetuity that never ends. Furthermore many political and religious figures in Pakistan think that India is not bound to the 1947 convention and will annex Pakistan to its territory if it can.
This perception has produced anti-Indian sentiments or Indophobia mixed with public fear in Pakistan at a level that even Indian Embassy in Kabul recognizes strategic threat to Pakistan’s sovereignty and national security. From Pakistan military’s perspective India is the permanent and lifetime enemy of Pakistan and their hostility never ends until India exists on the internal political geography. Therefore as long as Pakistan reproduce this perception, every effort to bring them in friendly and peaceful coexistence atmosphere, is meaningless. On the other hand India is anxious over Pakistan’s intelligence efforts for radicalizing Indian Muslims. Therefore it seems that until Pakistan denies its past and emphasize over its identity and narrative, there will not flash any hope to enhance the possibility of solving bloody tension between Pakistan and India. 
This is another sophisticated problem that Pakistan conceptualizes itself responsible to resist what it calls Indian’s domination and sovereignty over South Asia. Islamabad is trying its best to take advantage of every means to enhance its possibility such as expanding its nuclear arsenals, supervising terrorist attacks in the Indian territories as well as investing over terrorist groups and destabilizing Afghanistan to challenge Indian’s development as a modern economic zone. Pakistan wants to impose a pro-Pakistan political structure in Afghanistan that supervises its diplomatic relations under the supervision of Islamabad.
Consequently Islamabad doesn’t want to ease and facilitate any peace process that culminates in stability and establishment of an elected and powerful political structure in Afghanistan as long as it cannot create a new narrative in harmony with its past. Therefore any expectation from Pakistan to persuade Taliban joining a shared democratic political system in Afghanistan, peace or to stop financing them is a metaphoric expectation that never materialize in our generation.

Hadi Miraan is a Social Development Expert. He can be reached at hadimiraan@yahoo.com.

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