Islamabad confident of a ‘consensus’ Taliban regime
MINISTER WARNS OF ‘TERROR HUB’ IF PAKISTAN IS IGNORED
AFGHANISTAN will form a government within days, Pakistan’s foreign minister said on Tuesday (31), following the Taliban’s conquest of the country.
“We expect that a consensus government will be formed in the coming days in Afghanistan,” Shah Mehmood Qureshi told a news conference in Islamabad.
The hardline Islamist Taliban celebrated their total return to power on Tuesday with gunfire and diplomacy, after the last US troops flew out of Afghanistan to end two decades of war.
The US’ longest military conflict drew to a close on Monday (30) night when its forces abandoned Kabul’s airport, where it had overseen a frenzied airlift that saw more than 123,000 people flee.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told reporters their victory was a “lesson for other invaders”. When they were in power from 1996-2001, the Taliban was largely a pariah on the global stage and many Afghans are terrified of a repeat of that time, when the militants were notorious for their treatment of girls and women, as well as a brutal justice system.
This time, the Taliban appear keen on wide international recognition, although most nations have suspended or closed their diplomatic missions in Kabul.
The group has contacts with regional powers such as Pakistan, Iran, Russia and China, as well as Qatar – which hosted the Taliban’s political office for years.
Pakistan has deep ties with the Taliban and has been accused of supporting the Islamist group as it battled the US-backed government in Kabul – charges Islamabad has denied. When the Taliban captured Kabul last month, Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan said Afghans had broken the “shackles of slavery”.
Islamabad on Monday warned of potential spill overs from the Afghanistan crisis, saying the world would have to deal with a “huge mess” if its advice on the war-torn country was ignored.
Information minister Fawad Chaudhry said the world must listen to Pakistan as “in the recent past, Pakistan’s advice had not been paid heed to, and if Pakistan and the prime minister’s advice was listened to, the situation would have been different.”
“The way Afghanistan has been abandoned in the past and if the world repeats the same mistake, we will have a hub of extremist organisations right at the border of Pakistan which will obviously be hugely worrying for us,” he cautioned. He added that Pakistan had a “comprehensive strategy” to deal with instability and said, “we do not want to repeat the 1977 episode as we don’t want these migrants to get into Pakistan”.
Arrangements will be made at the border to deal with the exodus of people, the minister said.
The Taliban, meanwhile, have repeatedly promised a more tolerant rule compared with their first stint in power, and Mujahid continued that theme.