Current Issues in Afghanistan – UN and Others Role

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On 20th September 2021, the United Nations Organization confirmed complete diplomatic withdrawal from Afghanistan. As a follow-up, UN General Assembly high-level debate begins from 21 September 2021, the Taliban are expecting the UN to remove the names of their leadership from the blacklist as the name of acting government cannot be announced if the names Taliban figures on UN and US sanction list or group. All Western nations, neighbouring countries and those which have invested including India and China have distanced from Taliban.US authorities have taken a step further and linked Taliban with the reemergence of international terrorist threats like the group Islamic State (IS) or its local affiliate, Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K), which claimed responsibility for a deadly attack with crowds massed outside Kabul airport on 26 August. The Western propaganda has crossed all previous limits, not to allow Taliban to form a Government and efforts are being made to reach to a broad-based government as the only viable option.

Connecting events, Brookings reported on 6 August 2021, "Pakistan’s official stance is that it would prefer a peaceful outcome in Afghanistan, some sort of a power-sharing arrangement reached after an intra-Afghan peace deal. Many are skeptical of this given Pakistan’s support of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in the 1990s, and the sanctuary the group later found in Pakistan. But Pakistan argues that a protracted civil war in Afghanistan would be disastrous for it, on three dimensions: First, insecurity from Afghanistan would spill over into Pakistan. Second, Pakistan fears that this would set up space for the resurgence of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a group responsible for killing tens of thousands of Pakistani civilians and attacking the country’s army, security forces, and politicians. Third, this would increase the amount of refugee flows to Pakistan (which has hosted millions of Afghan refugees since the 1990s, including 3 million at present), which it can’t afford. These are well-founded fears."

Masshal Radio reported at the National Security and Defense Standing Committee, Pakistan's Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa and Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed, head of the military’s intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), issued the warning during an off-the-record meeting on the security situation in Pakistan and the region after the withdrawal of U.S.-led international forces from neighboring Afghanistan that an army crackdown against militants of the Afghan Taliban group inside Pakistan could result in blowback and Afghan Taliban and the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban, were “two faces of the same coin.” Another entity, The James Town Foundation published on its website, "Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan’s Latest Merger Enables Renewed Attacks in Pakistan.

In the same regard, in a latest development in the Pakistani capital Islamabad, a case was registered with the Aabpara police station under section 7 of the ATA, 124-A (sedition) and 188 (disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) after flags representing the Afghan Taliban were found hoisted on the rooftop of Jamia in G-7/3. Pakistan's Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed on 20 September 2021 said in a statement that the government resolved issues with Maulana Abdul Aziz through dialogue despite there were several cases against Maulana Aziz but the government wanted the situation in the capital to remain normal so "That's why we keep talking to them." He added that there were 511 Madrassahs and 1,000 mosques in the capital. He said, "Out of 511, we have issues with only one which we resolve through dialogue." In June 2020, under an agreement with the Government, Maulana Aziz and his wife shifted from Lal Masjid to their house located on the premises of JamiaHafsa at G-7.

Aftermath the withdrawal, UN conference last week, the Secretary General asked for $600 million but more than the expectations, $1.2 billion were pledged. It is interesting to note that many countries in the past pledged millions of dollars but failed to fulfill even small portion of their commitment.

As per the OCHA data on 15 September 2021, 634,000 people have been internally displaced by conflict around the country between 1 January and 15 September 202. IOM data recorded that between 1 January and 15 September, 890,726 undocumented Afghan returnees from Iran (881,582) and Pakistan (9,144).UNHCR figures recorded, there are 47% are Pashtun, 41% are Hazara and smaller numbers of those who are Tajik (9%) and Turkmen (1%). The data confirm that a selected portion of Afghan population on the basis of sectarian linkage was migrated to neighbouring countries to extend all facilities even as in refugee status. It will interest many that the generally those who approached UNHCR were ethnic Shitte or Persian speaking from Kunduz,Balkh and Kandahar, mostly Hazara applied for registration from Quetta, Balochistan and Faisalabad, Punjab in Pakistan while applicants, those who migrated from Nangarhar, Kabul and Kunar and settled in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The picture seems gloomy as Western nations along with the United Nations would continue patronizing Afghan sectarian minorities so that despite general amnesty by Taliban, they do not settle in Afghanistan and game of blood and fire continues in unstable Afghanistan while neighbouring Pakistan would be destabilized in hunt against Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.

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