NEW DELHI: Former president Hamid Karzai insisted on Wednesday that Afghanistan would not allow itself to become the battleground in a proxy war between India and Pakistan after the imminent departure of US-led troops.

Speaking in New Delhi, Mr Karzai angrily rejected warnings by his one-time counterpart in Islamabad Pervez Musharraf that India and Pakistan could co-opt allies among Afghanistan’s main ethnic groups to effectively wage war against each other, saying such claims were “hurtful”.

“Of course Afghanistan will not allow a proxy war between Pakistan and India,” Mr Karzai said in an address to a think tank, saying he was “sure” India wouldn’t allow such a scenario either.

In an interview earlier this week, Mr Musharraf warned that Pakistan would look to use ethnic Pashtuns to counter if India tried to achieve its goal of creating an “anti-Pakistan Afghanistan”.

But Mr Karzai said any suggestion that Pashtuns would do Pakistan’s bidding was “hurtful” and “an insult” to Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group.

“That was a very unfortunate remark,” said Mr Karzai, who is himself a Pashtun.

“Afghanistan has a history of 5,000 years. Saying that Pashtuns will be used as a tool is insulting to Pashtuns, insulting to the people of Afghanistan.”

Pakistan was one of only three countries that recognised the mainly Pashtun Taliban regime that ruled in Kabul before being toppled in late 2001 after a US-led invasion in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

Published in Dawn, November 20th, 2014