Americans out

January 19, 2020

This letter refers to the report ‘Troops pullout from Afghanistan: US should not repeat mistake of 1980: Shah Mehmood Qureshi’ (Jan 18, 2020). I think it is not much of a secret that if the Americans choose to stay in Afghanistan, it would not be for the sake of the Afghans but to retain the capacity of interfering in and destabilizing China, Iran and of course Pakistan. With that in mind, the foreign minister’s wish for Americans to stay behind in Afghanistan hardly makes sense. I strongly feel that the FM must demand that US troops be fully withdrawn from Afghanistan.

Surely China can prove a better substitute because, being in the neighbourhood, it has a natural interest in peace in the region. Moreover, China has the financial and technical resources to dig up the vast mineral wealth of Afghanistan and can thus bring prosperity to the impoverished country and the region as a whole.

S R H Hashmi

Karachi