West fans anti-Pakistan propaganda to cover Afghan ineptitude

ISLAMABAD: Following the collapse of the Afghan government and takeover by Taliban, the western media is shifting blame to Pakistan to cover up the failure of the foreign forces and the ineptitude of Ashraf Ghani and his equally incompetent government. “It is unfortunate that the Afghan government until recently has not managed the security of its own areas. They have a 300,000 strong military … a significant western aid as far as the military training is concerned… It would be unfair to blame Pakistan for the ineptitude and lack of will on behalf of the Afghanistan national security forces to fight Taliban,” political analyst Shahid Raza told the BBC.

In a recently published article, the BBC claimed that Taliban are mostly students from Pakistani madrasas, contrary to the fact that it is an indigenous Afghan group with its base, support and operations inside Afghanistan.

“Taliban are an autonomous group. They raise their own money. They have their own financial channels,” Raza said. He told the BBC that claiming that Pakistan had any automated control over Taliban or that they were Pakistan’s proxy was simply an incorrect statement. In fact, the Kabul regime and the political elite of Afghanistan, for their vested interests, have been trying to blame Pakistan to cover up their own faults.

In an interview to the Fox News, the then US secretary of state Hillary Clinton explained how the militancy in Pakistan was linked to the US-backed proxy war and the US funded Taliban 20 years ago.

Instead of linking Taliban with Pakistan, the UK media instead needs to focus how the US was the real creator of the Taliban. The western media always chose to ignore Pakistan’s sacrifices in the war against terrorism and also failed to critically question justification for the Afghan war. Negating the propaganda by the western media, the British Army’s Afghan war veteran Major (retd) Robert Gallimore, in a video statement, refuted Pakistan’s role in backing Taliban, saying that there were no traces of the ISI in Afghanistan.