Aslam
Pakistan’s recent military strikes inside Afghanistan have once again raised the question: can targeting residential areas and civilians really solve this government’s own internal, security, and political problems? When innocent civilians are harmed in the course of these strikes, the matter will no longer be limited to a military action. It will turn into a sensitive, serious issue whose effects and consequences will spill across both countries’ borders.
In recent years Pakistan has faced a long list of internal problems because of its own failed policies, from insecurity and armed group activity to economic troubles and social pressures. Now this regime is trying, through various means, to draw a curtain over its own failures and disgraces. In reality, it wants to use these strikes against Afghanistan to turn people’s attention away from its own domestic problems for a while, but this kind of failed approach can’t eliminate the insecurity it has itself helped create, nor can it solve this country’s economic, social, and other problems.
Pakistan’s own people should ask themselves: who ends up paying the price for ongoing military conflict in the region? An economy already struggling under so many problems and pressures, instead of moving toward stability and progress, how much longer will it have to carry the cost of a failed, crisis-ridden security strategy on its shoulders?
On another note, the matter of groups who have taken up arms for their own rights, and whose present situation has also been shaped by the policies of past Pakistani governments toward them, can’t be set aside either.
Over the past several decades, this regime has always tried to dump its own internal problems and its own mismanagement onto others, and in doing so, has also put the security of other countries at risk. It’s obvious to everyone that these strikes inside Afghanistan, used for political purposes, could ultimately spiral out of control and bring the same society that was originally meant to benefit from them face to face with their own bad consequences.
If Afghanistan is being targeted today under various pretexts, the effective way to counter these claims and excuses is for this regime to learn a lesson from its own past failed experiences. If it thinks the Afghan people will bow to its demands through force, it should take that hope with it to the grave, because this free people has proven its own capability and resolve time and time again. If forced to, they won’t hold back from any kind of sacrifice to drive out invaders, and they’ll rub the invaders’ noses in the dust and blood.
The peoples of Afghanistan and Pakistan both know that this puppet government has never once stayed loyal to its own promises and agreements, and has always taken the path of deception and betrayal instead. A mercenary, treacherous, self-indulgent government like this can never solve its own people’s problems or answer their demands.
On this matter, Pakistan’s own people have more right than anyone else to ask: why does insecurity still persist? Why is the economy still under pressure? And why do the policies of the past several decades still keep burdening this country with their heavy consequences? Should the answers to these questions, and to Pakistan’s own internal problems, really be sought outside its own borders, in targeting civilians?
Afghanistan and Pakistan are two neighboring countries. If this regime looks for the only solution to its own internal problems outside its own borders, and uses aggression against Afghanistan as an excuse for its own domestic unrest, it should be aware of the results and consequences of this injustice and wrongdoing.
