The Taliban will emerge stronger if fresh peace talks involving the US fail, participants of a panel discussion have warned.
The dialogue failure would damage stability both in Afghanistan and Pakistan besides posing a serious threat to other countries of the region, they warned.
The session — Afghanistan, Past and Present: Lessons in Continuity took place — at the academic and literary festival ThinkFest in Lahore on Saturday.
Former senator and president of Awami National Party’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa chapter Afrasiab Khattak, former NATO official Ms Susan Loughhead and German journalist Rupert Stone spoke on the topic.
Susan Loughhead also presented a slide show on Afghanistan’s pre-partition history and the genesis of the Durand Line that still serves as an unmarked border.
Afrasiab Khattak spoke of a growing realization in Pakistan that its policy of backing Taliban had failed, as the rebel group posed a threat to the culture, ethnicity and peace of both countries.
Any re-Talibanization of Afghanistan would damage the already scant infrastructure in the Pashtun-dominated belt, the ex-senator cautioned.
Rupert Stone called Taliban a group frozen in the Stone Age, introducing draconian laws, wielding weapons and suppressing women and freedoms.
The Taliban must change these perceptions, maintain diplomatic contacts with world powers and take the non-Pashtun population along, he proposed.
During another session, former foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar lamented that Pakistan’s foreign policy was a policy of beggars. Pakistan had not learnt any lesion from the 17-year war across the border, she said.
