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ISLAMABAD: Days ahead of US president-designate Donald Trump’s inauguration, a senior American commander responsible for security operations in Afghanistan underscored the need for cooperation among “all stakeholders” for peace in the war-ravaged country.
Centcom Commander “General Joseph L. Votel emphasised the need for continued and meaningful engagement between all stakeholders involved in peace and stability of Afghanistan,” Inter-Services Public Relations, the military’s public affairs wing, said about the US official’s meeting with Chief of the Army Staff Gen Qamar Bajwa at the General Headquarters on Monday.
An increasingly dysfunctional relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan after months of strains over a failed Afghan peace process and insufficient counterterrorism efforts poses a serious foreign policy challenge for the incoming Trump administration.
Gen Votel was the second senior American military official to visit Pakistan in past eight days. Last week, a top US commander in Afghanistan and chief of the Resolute Support Mission, Gen John Nicholson, came to Pakistan and made a rare trip to North Waziristan during his visit.
The ISPR statement did not clarify what Gen Votel meant by “all stakeholders”. It may be recalled that a quadrilateral process comprising Pakistan, US, Afghanistan and China had last year attempted to initiate peace talks with the Taliban, but the initiative faltered over Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour’s death in a US drone attack in Balochistan.
Pak-US ties also remained rocky last year primarily because of issues related to Afghanistan.
Gen Votel, however, in a conciliatory gesture praised Pakistan’s counterterrorism operations and, according to the ISPR, approved Gen Bajwa’s views about “inclusive reconciliation in Afghanistan through an Afghan-owned and Afghan-led process”.
Gen Bajwa has since the start of the year tried to engage the Afghan leadership. He first called Afghan leaders to convey New Year greetings and more lately phoned President Ashraf Ghani for condolences over the lives lost in recent bomb attacks.
Published in Dawn January 17th, 2017
