Ghani’s Pakistan bashing

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s trip to India, where he inked a billion-dollar aid deal and lost no opportunity to bash Pakistan should put to rest any idea that his government seeks better ties with Pakistan. The growing cooperation between Afghanistan and India on energy, agriculture, infrastructure and other areas will understandably make Pakistan wary as it sees this as part of an Indian plan to gain further influence in the area and use it to destabilise us. Ghani’s needlessly vitriolic statements against Pakistan only confirmed that belief. In a speech at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses in Delhi, Ghani described Afghanistan as a country which is “landlocked but thinks openly” while condemning Pakistan as a country which has “access to the sea and thinks like a landlocked country.” This reference to land and sea was not accidental since recent sticking points between Afghanistan and Pakistan centre on Pakistan’s refusal to allow Indian goods destined for Afghanistan to pass through the Wagah border. Pakistan, meanwhile, is upset at being shut out of the Chahbahar Port deal, which gives India access to both the lucrative Central Asian market and an all-weather port in Iran through Afghanistan. Add to those the new deals signed between Afghanistan and India and it is clear that we are deliberately being isolated in the region.

Pakistan’s response to the deal and the statements came not long after. Our permanent representative to the UN Maleeha Lodhi said Pakistan cannot be expected to fight Afghanistan’s war on its own soil and also called on Ghani to ensure his territory wasn’t being used to plot attacks in Afghanistan. This kind of tit-for-tat, where the two countries accuse each other of fomenting terrorism against each other has become depressingly familiar and it appears it will only increase in the near future. It is no coincidence that as Ghani has sought better ties with India, he has taken to making barely-veiled accusations against Pakistan on an almost daily basis. Even on areas where there should be some agreement, Ghani has stuck to his anti-Pakistan guns. For instance, Maleeha Lodhi pointed out that Pakistan wants to build fences along the border – something Afghanistan should support since it has long accused us of not properly patrolling the border. Now that we want to do something about it, however, Ghani is dead set against it; the closure of the Torkham border even led to indiscriminate firing by Afghan forces. While no one should want Afghanistan to be Pakistan’s proxy in the region, there should also be concern that Ghani is leading it down a path where it will be acting as India’s proxy.