Pakistan is urging the international community to adopt a three-pronged approach to Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover \u2013 quickly deliver aid to 14 million people facing a hunger crisis, promote an inclusive government, and work with the Taliban to counter terrorism in the country.<\/p>\n
Pakistan\u2019s ambassador to the United Nations Munir Akram laid out the vision of the government of Pakistan for a future international role in Afghanistan in an Associated Press interview on Thursday, saying Pakistan had been in contact with regional countries and the broader global community on working together on the three priorities.<\/p>\n
He stressed that humanitarian help must be the top priority and called it \u201cvery unhelpful\u201d for Afghanistan\u2019s assets to have been frozen, by the United States and others, because this leaves the Taliban with no access to dollars or foreign exchange to buy food or import oil.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere will be inflation. The prices in Afghanistan will rise further. The poverty level will rise,\u201d Akram warned.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou will then have a refugee crisis which is exactly what the West is afraid of.\u201d<\/p>\n
He called his country\u2019s influence on the Taliban \u201cexaggerated\u201d, though he said Pakistan had \u201ca fairly relaxed policy\u201d towards the three million Afghan refugees on its soil.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know better than others that you cannot force the Afghans to do anything, and I think the experience of the last 40 years has indicated that nobody actually from the outside can dictate to the Afghans,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, persuasion, yes. Talks with them, consultations, yes. But it\u2019s very difficult to persuade the Afghans.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pakistan initially brought the Taliban to the negotiating table to get them to stop the onslaught and go back to talks.<\/p>\n
Akram said Pakistan\u2019s prime minister and army chief went to Kabul to talk to former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani and invited the leadership to Pakistan.<\/p>\n
But Ghani \u201cremained intransigent about reaching a political settlement with the Taliban\u201d and the Taliban also had \u201ca very strong\u201d position against negotiations, he said.<\/p>\n
With the Taliban now in control of the country, Akram said Pakistan hopes its leaders \u201cwill listen to a sincere friend in trying to form an inclusive government\u201d where all the ethnic groups and minorities including Tajiks, Hazaras and Shiite Muslims are represented.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that if they are responsible, they will see the wisdom of inclusive government, and hopefully, we will have a government which can bring actually peace to the country,\u201d he said in the virtual interview from Geneva.<\/p>\n
On the education of women, he said, \u201cI think that the Taliban at least are conscious of the fact that their policies towards women the last time were horrible, that they were unpopular within the country as well as outside the country, and that they have therefore promised that the rights of women will be respected within the framework of Sharia or Islamic.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, Sharia law is quite broad and can be interpreted in different ways,\u201d he said. \u201cWe hope at the very least that there will be no coercion, there will be no imposition, and the basic fundamental rights of women to be able to work, to have freedom of speech, to have the ability to educate themselves will be respected.\u201d<\/p>\n
Akram repeatedly stressed that \u201cone of the mistakes\u201d the United States made in Afghanistan and Iraq was trying to impose Western democracy.<\/p>\n
\u201cA foreign culture cannot be imposed on a people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, Akram said the Americans also made \u201ca fundamental mistake\u201d by focusing on elites in the cities who benefited from the building of modern society while ignoring the development of 70 percent of the Afghan population who live in rural areas and whose lives in poverty remain unchanged after 20 years.<\/p>\n
Akram said the Taliban\u2019s support has been based in rural areas and villages where the \u201ccorrupt government\u201d in Kabul \u201cwas unable to bring clear, transparent, honest governance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Akram said the international community needs to help Afghans in rural areas educate themselves and acquire knowledge of the benefits of modern societies and modern values including human rights.<\/p>\n
Another important objective for the international community \u201cis to engage with the Taliban in order to address the problem of terrorism from Afghanistan,\u201d Akram said, citing terrorist groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State as well as others targeting China and Pakistan.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to get a grip on all these terror groups, and we will not be able to do it by being selective,\u201d he said, citing the U.S. saying it will attack the Islamic State affiliate that claimed responsibility for the Aug. 27 suicide attack outside Kabul\u2019s airport that killed at least 169 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members.<\/p>\n
He said Pakistan would wait to see how inclusive the Taliban government was and how well it was received in Afghanistan before deciding whether to recognize it.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur hope is that the Taliban with their actions, with an inclusive approach, will be able to bring together not only the whole country \u2026 but also the international community and the regional countries,\u201d Akram said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pakistan is urging the international community to adopt a three-pronged approach to Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover \u2013 quickly deliver aid to 14 million people facing a hunger crisis, promote an inclusive government, and work with the Taliban to counter terrorism in the country. Pakistan\u2019s ambassador to the United Nations Munir Akram laid out the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213060,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-213058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-top-news"],"yoast_head":"\n