PakistanÂ’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Munir Akram, said on Saturday that Islamabad had a vital interest in peace in Afghanistan and has deployed a large number of troops to prevent illegal cross-border movements, while pointing to internal reasons that recent international reports say have led to insurgency by Afghans in their country.
In a letter to the editor of the Washington Post, in response to a recent article written by renowned political commentator Fareed Zakaria (The Afghan Key: Musharraf), Ambassador Akram wrote: “Pakistan has a vital strategic interest in peace in Afghanistan. The Taliban are not the future for Pakistan or Afghanistan.”
Pakistan, he said, had deployed 80,000 troops to prevent illegal cross-border movements and in 80 operations conducted against terrorists has lost 600 soldiers. “Preventing cross-border movement is a responsibility of Afghanistan and international forces share. They should match our deployments on the other side.”
He then referred to a UN report released in September, which noted that the “insurgency is being conducted by Afghans inside Afghanistan, with five distinct leadership centres, all within Afghanistan”. He stressed that the UN report “identifies the interlinked sources of insecurity in Afghanistan: an absence of good governance, pervasive corruption, Pashtun political alienation, the drug economy, failure to deliver economic and social development, and resurgence of the Taliban”. |