Afghanistan And Pakistan Stability Linked, Say Experts

By Meagan Wiseley – University of New Mexico, Talk Radio News Service

In a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Thursday, expert witnesses agreed that the U.S. should neither abandon Afghanistan or substantially increase U.S. military forces in Afghanistan in regard to a stable Pakistan.

Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani Ambassador to the U.S. said, “a precipitous withdrawal would repeat the strategic mistake of the 1990s when the U.S. abandoned Afghanistan to the chaos that nurtured al-Qaida. Nor should the West risk being trapped in a Vietnam style quagmire, a war without end and with no guarantee of success.”

Steve Coll, President of the New America Foundation proposed a strategy that falls between withdrawal and militarization.

“It would make clear that the Taliban will never be permitted to take power by force in Kabul or major cities. It would seek and enforce stability in Afghan population centers, emphasize politics over combat, urban stability over rural patrolling, Afghan solutions over Western ones and it would incorporate Pakistan more directly into creative and persistent diplomatic efforts to stabilize Afghanistan and the region”, said Coll.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Ranking Member Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) introduced the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act, which Congress passed earlier this year, that will triple non-military assistance to Pakistan to $1.5 billion a year for the next five years.

Committee Chairman Kerry noted that “[U.S.] actions in Afghanistan will influence events in Pakistan and we must take that into account. But the ultimate choices about the country’s future will be made by the Pakistanis themselves.”