Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani sarcastically rejected $500
million in aid offered by Pakistan during the sixth Heart of Asia
ministerial conference in Amritsar, India.
During his
speech, President Ghani directly addressed Sartaj Aziz, an advisor to Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif on Foreign Affairs, saying, “Pakistan has generously
pledged 500 million dollars for the reconstruction of Afghanistan. This fund,
Mr. Aziz, could very well be used for containing extremism, because without
peace any amount of assistance will not meet the needs of our people.”
Relations
between Afghanistan and Pakistan were initially friendly when Ashraf Ghani
first took office in late 2014. He visited the Army’s General Headquarters in
Rawalpindi; long-demanding Afghan army cadets were sent to Pakistan for
training; and the heads of army and intelligence organizations exchanged
numerous trips.
On the other
hand, Indo-Afghan relations were not a first priority for Afghanistan, which
Pakistan had always wanted. Indeed, such an unprecedented move by the Afghan
president to befriend some Pakistani army generals antagonized most of his
close allies and inside supporters.
Apparently, Ghani was trying a more practical approach vis-à-vis Pakistan
and expected reciprocity; the biggest among other things was to bring the
Taliban to negotiate a peace deal with the Afghan government. Pakistan managed
to do so by orchestrating the Murree meeting where some Taliban members sat and
talked with Afghan government though the Taliban Doha office did
not formally confirm this. This was followed by a surprised announcement of the
Taliban supreme leader Mohammad Omar’s demise, who had passed away almost two years
ago.
Both countries
blamed each other for leaking and making the demise public because it blocked
the ongoing negotiations. Whoever did it is one issue, but the announcement was
rational enough as otherwise it could also endanger anytime the whole process. The leadership
crisis among the Taliban was an example of why the announcement was kept
secret.
After such a nascent attempt, no further development has been made though
expectations were high for a quadrilateral coordination group (Afghanistan,
Pakistan, China and the US).
Domestic
pressure mounted, casualties of both civil and military outnumbered past
figures, security situations deteriorated and Ghani’s expectations from
Pakistan started withering. His actions and concessions weren’t reciprocated,
and went almost unnoticed in Pakistan.
President Ghani
was left alone with almost no other option. Those who had been questioning
Ghani’s appeasing, or what they called ‘carrots but no stick’ approach towards
Pakistan, proved to have rational and logical arguments.
It was on this
backdrop that Ashraf Ghani took a tough stance and rejected Pakistan’s aid at
the Heart of Asia conference, as this was an opportunity to demonstrate his
disappointment and meanwhile let Pakistan do much more to prove to be a good
counterpart.
Such frustration
has caused anti-Pakistan sentiment both regionally and domestically. This seems
to be the reason that Ghani’s remarks and stance were applauded.
Speaker of lower
house in Afghan parliament Mr. Abdul Rauf said that what President Ashraf Ghani
expressed was a shared pain of all Afghans. Ex-head of Afghan intelligence also
thanked Afghan president for declining what he termed “blood soaked money.”
A heated debate
within Pakistan and its media is running over if it was a right decision to participate
at the conference, since Afghanistan had already boycotted the SAARC summit
scheduled in November in Islamabad.
Pakistan may
have – at least for now- understood what President Ashraf Ghani expectations
were when he first took office. Its envoy Sartaj Aziz, who participated and
represented Pakistan at the conference, while criticizing the Afghan president, added “His [Ashraf Ghani] statement is understandable. One can clearly
understand his anxiety.”
