Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s incendiary claims that the Pakistani government is backing the Taliban have harmed ties between the key US allies and could boost the Islamist militia, analysts say.After dropping hints for months about Islamabad’s role in the violence that has claimed 4,000 lives this year, Karzai directly accused the neighbouring Islamic republic on two separate occasions in the past week. In his strongest language to date, an emotional Karzai alleged on Wednesday that Pakistan was trying to turn the Afghan people into “slaves”, and vowed that they would never succeed. His words have angered Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf. “To hurl blame at each other is really counterproductive and strengthens the hand of the Taliban,” Pakistani analyst and retired general Talat Masood told AFP, adding, “Pakistan and Afghanistan must jointly resolve the threat of Talibanisation.”
Analysts say Karzai’s rants betray the weakness of a leader with a power base that barely extends beyond the capital Kabul – something they say will encourage the Taliban. “The latest outburst by Karzai only shows the extreme frustration through which the Afghan president is going,” said Masood.
Karzai is trying to ramp up pressure on the bigger and richer Pakistan “with the only means he has, his speeches,” added analyst and former Afghan minister Haminullah Tarzi. The Afghan president’s fiery rhetoric will also further erode Islamabad’s desire to cooperate with a country that it regards as untrustworthy and ungrateful for Pakistan’s help in ousting the Red Army during the 1980s.
Mushahid Hussain, chairman of Pakistan’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Kabul was using his country as a “convenient scapegoat for its own failures and mistakes”.
But analysts say Pakistan’s failure to prevent cross-border militancy – despite the 80,000 troops it says it has on the border and a series of bloody army operations – is a major cause of resentment that must be addressed. The International Crisis Group, a respected think-tank, said in a report this week that Musharraf’s government was “appeasing” militants in Pakistan’s restive tribal zone bordering Afghanistan by making peace deals.