Taliban urged to garner internal, external support for survival

LAHORE: Speakers at a meeting stressed that the biggest challenge facing Afghan Taliban is to make their government internally strong and supported by the majority of Afghan people to survive and silence the propaganda of their critics in the West.

Speaking at the special meeting of Hamdard Shoora Thursday, they said internal support to Taliban government would also win international support as well, but warned that if both these objectives remained evasive then they might face some new security and diplomatic challenges in future.

The meeting was chaired by Bushra Rehman and attended by Prof Mian Muhammad Akram, Brigadier Hamid Saeed Akhtar (retd), Justice Nasira Iqbal (retd), Prof AR Chaudhry, Rana Amir Ahmad Khan, Prof Naseer A. Chaudhry and others. The speakers said the US withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years war proved that wars are no solution to problems, and the negotiating table is the ultimate recourse to finding solution.

They stressed that US and its allies must realise that if they continued overtly or covertly confronting Taliban, then global peace would continue to face serious threats. On the other hand, they said, Pakistan has to devise its foreign policy wisely in these circumstances to avoid inviting further problems to its internal and external security. In this way, they said, Pakistan will see better results. But if past blunders continued, then Pakistan’s problems will increase further causing serious damages.