- Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani has said that the Taliban should cut ties with Pakistan to ensure peace and they should not have a safe haven in there.
- The Afghan president also urged Pakistan to play a positive role in the Afghan peace process.
- The US Pentagon too has accused the Taliban of not honoring the deal signed under Trump to ensure peace in the country.
- Afghanistan’s First Vice President Amrullah Saleh has also blamed Taliban and its masters in Pakistan for indoctrination and terror acts in the country
President Ashraf Ghani while addressing a press conference on January 23rd said that the Taliban should cut ties with Pakistan and they should not have a safe haven in there, reports Khaama news.
“One of the basic needs for peace in Afghanistan is that the Taliban should cut their ties with Pakistan. If they call themselves Afghans and want to be in Afghanistan; they should not have dual citizenship,” Ashraf Ghani was quoted by Ariana News. The Afghan president also urged Pakistan to play a positive role in the Afghan peace process. “I urged PM of Pakistan to tell Taliban that there is no solution without a political settlement,” said Ghani.
His statement becomes prominent as the Pentagon too has accused the Taliban of not honoring the deal signed under Trump to ensure peace in the country. “The Taliban have not met their commitments,” Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said on Thursday. “Without them meeting their commitments to renounce terrorism and to stop the violent attacks on the Afghan national security forces, and by dint of that the Afghan people, it’s very hard to see a specific way forward for the negotiated settlement.”
Consequnetly, Pentagon on Thursday said that the Biden administration would not commit to a full drawdown of US troops from Afghanistan by May because the Taliban have not honored the commitments they made in their agreement with the United States signed in Doha last year in February.
The President Ghani has also criticized the interim government plan, emphasizing a democratic process for the power transfer. Ghani stated that he will transfer power to the Taliban if they are elected by the people in the elections. Ghani added, “We hope for peace, but we are ready for every danger,”, he also indicated that in the final steps, the people of Afghanistan will decide the outcome of negotiations.
Afghanistan’s First Vice President Amrullah Saleh has also blamed Taliban and its masters in Pakistan for indoctrination and terror acts in the country. He said that the Taliban does not care about the lives of the people and continues indoctrination of people including minors to commit deadly activities, as they want to please their master (Pakistan). Saleh in a Facebook post, wrote “I urge all families in the country not to give their children to anyone under the guise of religious education”.
Taliban are doing everything to please and keep Pakistan happy, he wrote.
Saleh had previously said that the Taliban gathers and uses young people and minors, who cannot distinguish between good and bad, to carry out major attacks and be involved in insurgency manoeuvres.
The pleas from President and the First Vice President comes as peace negotiators in Doha are discussing the Afghan peace process. The US under Trump had drastically reduced the troop size with only a few thousand soldiers being stationed in Afghanistan. The troop pull out has posed a problem to the Afghan forces which are already finding it tough to battle the Taliban and other terror groups operating in the country.
The US-Taliban agreement calls for the Taliban to reduce violence and cut ties with terrorist organizations, including al-Qaeda, among other demands. If the conditions of the deal were met, US forces would leave Afghanistan by May 2021. The US force level in Afghanistan was reduced to 2,500 troops just days before former US President Donald Trump left office.
Balaji Subramanian 
Dhruv Ashok 
Aayush Pal