‘Elements against Afghan peace process will lose in the end game'

Islamabad: Former foreign secretary Salman Bashir has insisted that the international and regional spoilers conspiring against Afghan peace process will themselves be the biggest losers in the end game.

He was addressing the launch of a book of Pakistan’s former ambassador to Afghanistan, Ambassador (r) Syed Abrar Hussain, ‘Afghanistan: Mulla Umer se Ashraf Ghani Tak’, published by the publishing arm of Institute of Policy Studies (IPS), Islamabad.

A discussion on the recent developments on Afghanistan after 19 years of US invasion was also discussed by panellists, including Ambassador (r) Abdul Basit, Ambassador (r) Ayaz Wazir, Brig (r) Said Nazir Mohmand, Air Cdr (r) Khalid Iqbal, Ammara Durrani, senior research fellow, Jinnah Institute, Afghan scholars Professor Haroon Khatibi and Naseer Ahmed Naveedi from Centre for Strategic and Regional Studies (CSRS), Kabul, Dr Adnan Sarwar Khan, former dean, Peshawar University, and senior journalists Faizullah Khan and Naimat Khan.

Syed Abrar Hussain's personal accounts of historic events from Mulla Umar’s era and during Ashraf Ghani’s time, a rich commentary on the history of Pak-Afghan relations and insights into the Afghan peace process are key features of his memoirs.

He has also presented an admissible strategy at the end of the publication for the amelioration of Pak-Afghan relations, which should be looked at by the policy circles of both sides with sincerity and honesty.

The session was chaired and hosted by IPS executive president Khalid Rahman. Ammara Durrani said the international media and academia didn't give much space to Pakistani perspective in geopolitics and there were hardly any Pakistani commentators visible.

"Pakistan must make use of its diplomats and train them to help set Pakistani narrative through mainstream and social media at the global stage." Former ambassador Basit said the Afghan Taliban claim themselves to be the “Islamic Emirate” and as an ideological movement their strength did not lie in democracy as any such move would only break their organisation and end their clout.

"They [Taliban] may never become part of any democratic government in a republican Afghanistan." He feared that there may not be any intra-Afghan reconciliation in the end and the development may only prove to be an effort to buy or consume some time.

The former envoy said Pakistan should stay prepared for any such scenarios, and instead of taking credit for the peace process and taking the burden of more responsibilities in the process, should try to carve out a backup strategy as well, bringing all stakeholders on one page, developing a consistent policy and they propagating effectively through a well-formed narrative.

The speakers said it was essential for Pakistani narrative to reach out to the world outside. They said there are many books available by Indian authors and researchers on the topic of Afghanistan, but any presentable work by a Pakistani author on the subject was hard to find. The experts underscored the need for utilizing the wealth of knowledge Pakistan’s foreign policy practitioners possessed and said the training of Pakistan’s former high commissioners and ambassadors on efficient use of conventional and social media for indigenous knowledge production could be a useful tool to further the country’s foreign policy objectives.