Pakistan: Why Would Taliban Listen to Us When They’re ‘Sensing Victory’?

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan defended Friday his government’s efforts to promote a negotiated settlement to the conflict in Afghanistan, rebutting allegations that Islamabad was backing the Taliban’s violent insurgency to fuel hostilities in the neighboring country.

Khan spoke at an international regional connectivity conference hosted by Uzbekistan, shortly after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani addressed the event and accused Pakistan of “playing a negative” role in the war. The Afghan leader said that “intelligence estimates indicate the influx of over 10,000 jihadi fighters from Pakistan and other places in the last month.” Ghani went on to allege that despite pledges and assurances, Khan’s government had failed to influence the Taliban to “negotiate seriously” to find an end to the Afghan war. Khan responded by saying he was “disappointed” by the Afghan president’s “extremely unfair” allegations, insisting that Pakistan had suffered 70,000 casualties in the last 15 years in its own battle against terrorism and that its fragile national economic progress could ill afford a prolonged instability in the immediate neighborhood.