WASHINGTON: The United States never sought to target the Taliban ‘just as Taliban’, says a senior US official while stressing the need for a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan.

US Special Representative Dan Feldman also said that there was a recognition in Pakistan that long-term stability on their border was in their interest.

At a news briefing in Washington, he noted that after the Sept 11, 2011, terrorist attacks in the United States, Washington went to Afghanistan to catch Osama bin Laden and eliminate Al Qaeda.

“It was the Taliban that sought to continue to protect and harbour him and who declared us the enemy. And so we have never sought to target Taliban just as Taliban,” Ambassador Feldman said.

Responding to a question about Pakistan’s role in resolving the Afghan conflict, the US envoy said: “I do think that there is a sincere effort … and a recognition (in Pakistan) that long-term stability on their border is in their interest and that they have a role to play in … (ensuring) a peaceful resolution to this process.”

Mr Feldman, who is the special US envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, was briefing the media on Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s visit to Washington last week.

He disagreed with the suggestion that some of President Ghani’s remarks implied a criticism of Pakistan.

Feldman says the conflict cannot end through military means alone

President Ghani, he said, had taken a “very pragmatic and strategic approach” and in the course of just six or seven months, he had changed the dynamics of Afghanistan’s relations with Pakistan in a way that wasn’t possible before.

The US envoy also appreciated Pakistan’s military offensive against militants in Fata and expressed complete support to the operation.

He said that the Dec 16, 2014, terrorist attack on Army Public School in Peshawar had “galvanised a national consensus against all forms of extremism”.

The massacre of innocent children also fed into the national commitment to “address these forms of extremism and to use their leverage to bring about a peaceful resolution to Afghanistan’s long-term conflict”, he said.

“So we’ll have to see what occurs, but in my conversations with civilian and military and intelligence leadership in Pakistan, I think that there is an opportunity here that hasn’t been here in the past.”

Ambassador Feldman also stressed the need to understand that the Afghan conflict could not end only through military means.

Published in Dawn, March 30th, 2015

On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google Play