Pakistani Security Officials Had Warned of Afghan Army's Collapse

[Riaz Haq]

Pakistani security officials had warned Americans and Indians that the Afghan Army would collapse when faced with the Taliban onslaught, according to multiple people including American journalist Steve Coll and Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval. Former US Ambassador Ryan Crocker who has served in both Afghanistan and Pakistan has recently written that Pakistanis' skepticism has been validated. 

Afghan National Army

In response to a question posed by New Yorker staff writer Isaac Chotiner, Steve Coll, author of "Directorate S" about Pakistan ISI, said, "I remember talking to the Pakistani generals about this (US building Afghan Army) circa 2012. And they all said, “You just can’t do that. It won’t work.” They turned out to be right". Here's the relevant excerpt of the New Yorker interview published on August 15, 2021: 

Isaac Chotiner: Why, ultimately, was it so hard to stand up the Afghan military to a greater extent than America did? Was it some lack of political legitimacy? Some problem with the actual training? 

Steve Coll: I don’t know what proportion of the factors, including the ones you listed, to credit. But I think that the one additional reason it didn’t work was the sheer scale of the ambition. And this was visible in Iraq as well. Building a standing army of three hundred thousand in a country that has been shattered by more than forty consecutive years of war and whose economy is almost entirely dependent on external aid—that just doesn’t work. What did work was what at various stages people thought might be possible, which was to build a stronger, more coherent, better-trained force, which has effectively been the only real fighting force on behalf of the Kabul government over the past few years. This force is referred to as commandos or Special Forces, but it is basically twenty or thirty thousand people. That you can build with a lot of investment and hands-on training. But you can’t just create an army of three hundred thousand. I remember talking to the Pakistani generals about this circa 2012. And they all said, “You just can’t do that. It won’t work.” They turned out to be right.

A 2013 video clip of Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval has recently surfaced in which he essentially confirms what Steve Coll told The New Yorker.  Doval can be heard saying that the 325,000 strong Afghan Army and police will deliver. He said the Afghan Army is well trained and sufficiently motivated. Doval believed the Afghan National Army will defend the Afghan state and Afghanistan's constitution and democracy irrespective of what happens at the political level, he added. Doval said he didn't believe 15-20 Pakistani security officials who have told him otherwise. He said he never believes anything the Pakistanis say.  

Former US Ambassador Ryan Crocker who has served in both Afghanistan and Pakistan has written in a New York Times Op Ed that "We (Americans) have again validated their (Pakistanis') skepticism".  Here's an excerpt of Crocket's Op Ed:

I pushed Pakistani officials repeatedly on the need to deny the Taliban safe havens. The answer I got back over time went like this: “We know you. We know you don’t have patience for the long fight. We know the day will come when you just get tired and go home — it’s what you do. But we aren’t going anywhere — this is where we live. So if you think we are going to turn the Taliban into a mortal enemy, you are completely crazy.” We have again validated their skepticism.

In a recent interview with BBC's Yalda Hakim, General Sir Nick Carter, the Chief of the British Armed Forces, has said that the Pakistani Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa is an upright man. Carter said that General Bajwa wanted to see a peaceful and moderate Afghanistan. He said that Pakistan had to face various challenges. Pakistan sheltered 3.5 million Afghan refugees on its soil. The British military chief said Pakistan had set up barricades on the Afghan border and was keeping a close eye on border traffic.  

Carter Malkasian, former advisor to US Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dunford, has recently talked about how Afghan governments have scapegoated Pakistan for their failures. He said: "Let’s take Pakistan, for example. Pakistan is a powerful factor here. But on the battlefield, if 200 Afghan police and army are confronted with 50 Taliban or less than that, and those government forces retreat, that doesn’t have a lot to do with Pakistan. That has to do with something else". 

In another discussion,  Malkasian explained the rapid advance of the Taliban and the collapse of the Afghan government led by President Ashraf Ghani. Here's what he said:

Over time, aware of the government’s vulnerable position, Afghan leaders turned to an outside source to galvanize the population: Pakistan. Razziq, President Hamid Karzai and later President Ashraf Ghani used Pakistan as an outside threat to unite Afghans behind them. They refused to characterize the Taliban as anything but a creation of Islamabad. Razziq relentlessly claimed to be fighting a foreign Pakistani invasion. Yet Pakistan could never fully out-inspire occupation.  

Here's Ajit Doval from 2013 on his assessment of the strength of the Afghan Army:

https://youtu.be/l2ZuJxUBHDs

https://www.youtube.com/embed/l2ZuJxUBHDs"; title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>" height="315" src="https://img1.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png" width="560" style="cursor: move; background-color: #b2b2b2;" />

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

South Asia Investor Review

Indian NSA Ajit Doval on Use of Taliban Against Pakistan

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Karan Thapar Debunks Indian Narrative of Kulbhushan Yadav

Coll's Directorate Demonizes Pakistan ISI

Gen Petraeus Debunks Charges of Pakistani Duplicity

Husain Haqqani vs Riaz Haq on India vs Pakistan

Pakistan ISI: Afghans' Bogeyman?

Ex CIA Officer on ISI

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Robert Gates' Straight Talk on Pakistan  

Riaz Haq's Youtube Channel

PakAlumni Social Network

[Riaz Haq]

#Pakistan NSA @YusufMoeed on scapegoating of his country: “Did Pakistan tell the Afghan National Army not to fight? Did Pakistan tell Ashraf Ghani to run away?..the entire state collapsed in a week. So somebody was lying...." #US #Afghanistan #Taliban https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/25/pakistan-wants-b...

As the world begins to process the implications of the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, lots of people in Washington are pointing fingers at Pakistan, a major non-NATO ally that hasn’t been seen as an ally for a long time. But the world is changing fast, and the United States and Pakistan each have a clear interest in moving past their problems and working together, the country’s national security adviser told me in an interview.

To the extent that Pakistan is mentioned in U.S. media coverage of the Afghanistan crisis, it is mostly indicted for its alleged support of the Taliban over the years. Now that the Taliban has taken power, Washington experts are once again accusing Pakistan of complicity with the jihadists and calling for punishments, such as cutting off assistance or imposing sanctions on the government. But in Islamabad, the civilian leadership is not celebrating the Taliban victory. Instead it is trying to manage the coming fallout.

Afghan instability could lead to more terrorism, refugees and economic hardship for Pakistan, Prime Minister Imran Khan’s national security adviser, Moeed Yusuf, said in a phone interview. The United States and Pakistan have a shared interest in working together in Afghanistan, he said, but that will require fixing the bilateral relationship.

“Right now, in the situation we are in, how are U.S. and Pakistan’s interests not aligned?” he said. “I’m not asking for any sympathy for Pakistan. I’m thinking in terms of pure U.S. selfish national interests. How does it help to push away a country of this size, stature and power?”

U.S. intelligence agencies believe that elements of the Pakistani military and intelligence system have supported the Taliban for years, a charge the civilian leadership denies. According to Human Rights Watch, this support has included funding, diplomatic support, recruiting and training of Taliban fighters, providing the Taliban arms and even direct combat support.

Pakistan perennially stands accused of providing havens for the Taliban on its side of the border. Pakistani officials point out that tens of thousands of Pakistani soldiers have died fighting extremists in their own country since 9/11.

“Pakistan is the victim. We had nothing to do with 9/11. … We teamed up with the U.S. to fight back … and after that there is a major backlash on Pakistan,” Yusuf said. “But let’s let all that pass. We need to work out how to move forward as partners, because neither side can do without the other in terms of stability in the region.”

The U.S.-supported government in Kabul used Pakistan as a scapegoat to excuse its own ineptitude, corruptions and unpopularity, Yusuf said. Pakistan helped bring the Taliban to the negotiating table at Washington’s request, got cut out of the negotiations and is now being blamed for the outcome.

“Did Pakistan tell the Afghan National Army not to fight? Did Pakistan tell Ashraf Ghani to run away?” he said. “The entire state collapsed in a week. So somebody was lying, somebody was misreporting, or somebody was mistaken about the reality and when it came to informing the taxpayers of the Western world.”

[Riaz Haq]

Ghazala Wahab
@ghazalawahab

Two reasons why India's foreign policy always come up short.

1. Exaggerated sense of self.
2. Deep-rooted hatred against Pakistan, which translates into prejudice against Muslims; and repeated iteration of cross-border terrorism, when we know there is no such thing

#IndiaAt75

https://twitter.com/ghazalawahab/status/1430526871196684297?s=20

[Riaz Haq]

Bruce Reidel on Taliban victory in Afghanistan:


https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2021/08/24/pakistan...

The Biden administration has taken a curious lack of interest in Pakistan. Routine contacts with the army, diplomats, and spies have continued but President Biden has ignored the country. He has not spoken with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan. Khan is the elected leader of the sixth most populous country in the world with a growing nuclear weapons arsenal. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been to New Delhi but not to Islamabad. The fiasco in Kabul should be a wake-up call to get involved.


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The Afghan Taliban and their Pakistani army patrons are back in Kabul before the 20th anniversary of 9/11. Pakistan’s army Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) has backed the Taliban since the group’s origin in the mid-1990s. Under intense pressure in September 2001, the ISI briefly removed its experts and assistance, creating the same panic and flight to the Taliban that the U.S. withdrawal just did to the Afghan army. But the ISI quickly renewed its support and that aid continues today. The Taliban/ISI victory in Afghanistan will have significant consequences for Pakistan, some of which may be dangerous and violent.

Mullah Omar, the founder of the Taliban, was trained by the ISI during the war against the Soviets in the 1980s. When he was wounded, he got medical attention in a Pakistani hospital. After the Soviets retreated out of Afghanistan, he was one of many warlords fighting for control of the country. As he created the Taliban, the Pakistani army gave him support for the drive on Kabul in 1996 that gave the Taliban control of most of the country. Pakistan provided experts and advisers for the Taliban military, oil for its economy and was their supply route to the outside world.


After the American invasion of Afghanistan, Omar went into exile in Pakistan along with most of his lieutenants. With the ISI’s help, they rebuilt the infrastructure in the borderlands and gradually stepped up attacks on the NATO and Afghan forces. Pakistani aid went far beyond sanctuary and safe haven for the leadership and cadres and their families — it included training, arms, experts, and help in fundraising, especially in the Gulf states. On occasion, Pakistani advisers accompanied the Taliban on missions inside Afghanistan. The ISI is particularly close to the Haqqani network in the Taliban. Omar most likely died in Karachi; his death was not announced for months.

It is fair to assume that the ISI helped the Taliban plan its blitzkrieg this summer. The Taliban’s seizing of the north reflected memories of its enemies using bases there in the late 1990s to resist the Taliban and the CIA using those facilities to bring down the Taliban in 2001. The plan also prioritized seizing border crossings, especially in the west, which kept Iran from providing aid to its Shiite Hazara allies in Afghanistan.

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Islamist parties in Pakistan have celebrated the victory in Afghanistan. Undoubtedly the ISI is hailing the fall of Kabul as their humbling of a second superpower, but it is savvy enough to do its gloating in private.

[Riaz Haq]

Who killed more #Afghan civilians? In 2019, allied (#US/#NATO) and (#Ghani) government airstrikes in #Afghanistan killed some 700 civilians, more than in any other year since the war’s start, according to the Costs of War Project. #Taliban https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/23/opinion/afghanistan-biden.html?s...


“As a consequence, the A.A.F. is harming more Afghan civilians than at any time in its history,” Neta C. Crawford, the chair of the political science department at Boston University and a co-director of the Costs of War Project, wrote last year.

I don’t know the name or background of any of these civilians as I know the name of Zaki Anwari, the 17-year-old member of Afghanistan’s national youth soccer team who fell to his death after clinging to a U.S. military plane evacuating people from Kabul. But America is as responsible for them as it is for the Afghans who will die because of our mismanaged withdrawal. Amid the wrenching scenes of the war’s denouement, that’s easy to forget, especially when commentators pretend that the conflict Joe Biden inherited could have been maintained at little price.

There are two primary critiques of Biden’s Afghanistan policy. The first, which is valid, blames the administration for not clearing bureaucratic obstacles that kept Afghan allies waiting for visas, possibly stranding tens of thousands of people who deserve to be evacuated. The second, which is absurd, blames Biden for defeat in a war that was lost years ago.

Ryan Crocker, Barack Obama’s ambassador to Afghanistan, criticized the administration’s lack of “strategic patience” in a guest essay in The New York Times. “Mr. Biden’s decision to withdraw all U.S. forces destroyed an affordable status quo that could have lasted indefinitely at a minimum cost in blood and treasure,” he wrote.

In The Washington Post, Condoleezza Rice wrote, “Twenty years was not enough to complete a journey from the seventh-century rule of the Taliban and a 30-year civil war to a stable government.” She added, “We — and they — needed more time.”

The argument for patience or more time assumes that the American presence in Afghanistan was doing more good than harm. For some Afghans, particularly in the capital, this was undoubtedly true. Keeping a contingent of American troops in Afghanistan might well have protected those who will be most hurt by the Taliban’s theocratic barbarism.

But for America to remain in Afghanistan, Biden would have had to renege on Trump’s deal with the Taliban. More American troops would be required, and fighting, including American airstrikes, would almost certainly ramp up. That would mean more suffering, and more death, for many Afghan civilians.

Crawford told me that the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan began releasing data on civilian casualties in 2008. Most years, she said, the Taliban, Al Qaeda and ISIS were responsible for the majority of civilian deaths, but not every year.

[Riaz Haq]

Mike Mullen’s Afghanistan admission: Biden was right about the mission.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/08/mike-mullen-afghanistan...

The other big mistake, Mullen said: “We underestimated the significance of our presence, in all that we were doing.” First, American trainers created an Afghan army in their own image, heavily reliant on U.S. close-air support, intelligence, logistics, helicopter transport, repair, and maintenance. When this combat support was withdrawn, he said, collapse was almost inevitable. There was a more intangible side of this dependency as well—“the confidence they got by having us there.” He added, “Their soldiers fought—tens of thousands died.” When they saw that we were leaving, the wind went out of them, and so they made deals with the Taliban or simply fled.

And yet, Mullen admits, he sat at the pinnacle of the U.S. military machine back when this dependency was molded.

Most of Mullen’s colleagues from the Bush and Obama era have continued to defend the decision to escalate the war; none have taken responsibility for any strategic miscalculations. Retired Gen. David Petraeus, former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, has said that, if we’d pull out the troops after killing Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida would simply have returned.

Asked about this claim, Mullen said that Petraeus, with whom he worked closely at the time, makes a “legitimate” point. But, he went on, by 2012, it was “widely believed that al-Qaida was pretty significantly diminished, and that’s where they’ve stayed.” Mullen added, “Keeping al-Qaida at bay” was clearly in U.S. interests, but “it was not a reason to stay”—that is, it was not a mission that required a continued U.S. combat presence, much less a sharp escalation.

Mullen, who now heads a private consulting firm, said that he’s received “tons of email,” much of it from people he barely knew, thanking him for his remarks in the ABC News interview. “A junior officer wrote me, saying how ‘refreshing’ it is, hearing someone in a senior position to admit he got it wrong.”

I asked whether he’d heard from any of his fellow senior officers. “The rest of the silent crew?” he said, with a slight chuckle. “No, I haven’t heard from them.”

[Riaz Haq]

Talks With Taliban Must Continue To Preserve Gains: German Chancellor Angela Merkel | Barron's

https://www.barrons.com/news/talks-with-taliban-must-continue-to-sa...

The international community must maintain dialogue with the Taliban if it is to protect improvements made in Afghanistan during two decades of NATO deployment, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday.

"Our goal must be to preserve as much as possible what we have achieved in terms of changes in Afghanistan in the last 20 years. This is something the international community must talk about with the Taliban," Merkel said in a speech to parliament.

Progress made over the years includes access to basic necessities -- 70 percent of Afghans now have access to drinking water as opposed to 20 percent a decade ago.

And nine in 10 people have electricity supplies, up from just two in 10 in 2011.

The fact that the Taliban are back in power is "bitter but we have to deal with it," Merkel said.

"Many things in history take a long time. That is why we must not and will not forget Afghanistan," she said.

"Because even if it doesn't look like it in this bitter hour, I remain convinced that no force or ideology can resist the drive for justice and peace," said Merkel, who grew up in communist East Germany but saw the regime collapse in 1989.

[Riaz Haq]

British Defense Forces Chief General Nick Carter: "We may well discover, if we give them the space, that this Taliban is of course more reasonable but what we absolutely have to remember is that they are not a homogenous organisation — the Taliban is a group of disparate tribal figures that come from all over rural Afghanistan."

Carter said the Taliban were essentially "country boys" who lived by the so called "Pashtunwali", the traditional tribal way of life and code of conduct of the Pashtun people.


https://www.trtworld.com/asia/the-taliban-could-be-different-this-t...


The world should give the Taliban the space to form a new government in Afghanistan and it may discover that the insurgents cast as militants by the West for decades have become more reasonable, the head of the British army said, sparking online controversy.

Nick Carter, Britain's chief of the defence staff, said he was in contact with former Afghan President Hamid Karzai who Carter said would meet the Taliban on Wednesday.

"We have to be patient, we have to hold our nerve and we have to give them the space to form a government and we have to give them the space to show their credentials," Carter told the BBC.

"It may be that this Taliban is a different Taliban to the one that people remember from the 1990s."

However, some British lawmakers, journalists and army veterans were doubtful about Carter's observation about the militant group.

[Riaz Haq]

#Beijing warns: "Some #US & #Indian #intelligence forces keen to infiltrate into #Pakistan....#China will not only support Pakistan to strike a heavy blow to these #terror forces, but also warn all the external forces to stay away from those terror forces" https://www.newsweek.com/china-losing-pakistan-calls-america-india-...

Op Ed Gordon Chang


As China makes gains in Afghanistan, the regime is suffering severe setbacks in neighboring Pakistan, where resentment against Chinese interests is widespread.

Two suicide bombings in Pakistan—last week and last month—have taken the lives of 11 Chinese nationals and cast doubt about the viability of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. CPEC, as the $62 billion plan is known, is the centerpiece of Xi Jinping's Belt and Road (BRI), his global infrastructure initiative.

China has blamed both the U.S. and India for complicity in the deadly bombings. Beijing could take action against them, thereby engulfing the world's major powers in conflict.


On Friday, a boy suicide bomber killed two Chinese children traveling in the last car of a convoy on the Gwadar East Bay Expressway, a CPEC project. China is caught in the middle of long-running disputes in Pakistan, especially between the oppressed Balochs and Islamabad, and there is little Beijing can do to ensure the security of its workers and dependents in-country. The Balochistan Liberation Army claimed responsibility for the attack.


Gwadar, a Chinese-built port on the Arabian Sea, has been hit by weeks-long protests that shut down the city. Those disturbances have been directed in part against illegal Chinese fishing in nearby waters.

The Gwadar disturbances follow a suicide bombing, on the 14th of last month, targeting the Dasu dam, another CPEC project. The explosion forced a bus into a ravine, killing nine Chinese nationals. The attack is believed to be the most deadly incident against Chinese interests in Pakistan.

"Recently, the security situation in Pakistan has been severe," declared a statement from the Chinese embassy in Islamabad on Friday.

These two incidents, which have followed a series of attacks, have especially alarmed Beijing. "If you've seen the recent developments with CPEC and the Chinese investments in Pakistan, there's been far more anxiety about the security situation there in the last few months than in the last few years," said Andrew Small of the German Marshall Fund to the Hindu, the Chennai-based newspaper. "They're concerned that effectively, Afghanistan could be used as strategic depth for the Pakistani Taliban, and that would have implications for their investments and security interests in the country."

China should be worried. As Kamran Bokhari of the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy tells Newsweek, the fall of the Afghan government has energized the Tehreek-e-Taliban, more commonly known as the Pakistani Taliban. The group "will want to take advantage of what they see as a historic opportunity to replicate in Pakistan the emiratic regime," Bokhari says. To do that, the Pakistani Taliban has been targeting Chinese interests to get Beijing to abandon CPEC projects. As Bokhari points out, China's leaving will weaken Islamabad, and that will help the Pakistani Taliban either topple the current government or grab control of territory along the Afghan border.

Pakistani authorities blamed the July 14 suicide bombing on the Pakistani Taliban, but they say the attacker was "trained in Afghanistan" and "received support from Indian and Afghan intelligence agencies."

[Riaz Haq]

#US Sec of State #Blinken: "Going forward, we will judge our engagement with any Taliban-led government in Afghanistan based on one simple proposition: our interests" #Afghanistan #Taliban #America https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-on-afghanistan/

Thank you. Thank you. Our focus right now is on getting our citizens and getting other – our partners – Afghan partners, third-country partners who have been working in Afghanistan with us – out of the country and to safety. And for that purpose, first, the Taliban, whether we like it or not, is in control – largely in control of the country, certainly in control of the city of Kabul. And it’s been important to work with them to try to facilitate and ensure the departure of all those who want to leave, and that has actually been something that we’ve been focused on for – from the beginning of this operation, because as a practical matter it advances our interests.

Second, we’ve been engaged with the Taliban for some time diplomatically going back years in efforts, as you know, to try to advance a peaceful settlement of the conflict in Afghanistan. There’s still talks and conversations underway even now between the Taliban and former members of the Afghan government with regard, for example, to a transfer of power and some inclusivity in a future government. And I think it’s in our interest where possible to support those efforts.

Going forward, we will judge our engagement with any Taliban-led government in Afghanistan based on one simple proposition: our interests, and does it help us advance them or not. If engagement with the government can advance the enduring interests we will have in counterterrorism, the enduring interest we’ll have in trying to help the Afghan people who need humanitarian assistance, in the enduring interest we have in seeing that the rights of all Afghans, especially women and girls, are upheld, then we’ll do it.

But fundamentally, the nature of that engagement and the nature of any relationship depends entirely on the actions and conduct of the Taliban. If a future government upholds the basic rights of the Afghan people, if it makes good on its commitments to ensure that Afghanistan cannot be used as a launching pad for terrorist attacks directed against us and our allies and partners, and in the first instance, if it makes good on its commitments to allow people who want to leave Afghanistan to leave, that’s a government we can work with. If it doesn’t, we will make sure that we use every appropriate tool at our disposal to isolate that government, and as I said before, Afghanistan will be a pariah.

[Riaz Haq]

Pakistan’s national security adviser urges west to engage with Taliban

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/26/pakistans-national-se...


Yusuf called for an internationally coordinated effort, backed with an economic plan, to persuade the Taliban government that there “should be an inclusive government, rights protected, a moderate governance model”.

In a speech to the Conservative thinktank Policy Exchange, however, Yusuf came under pressure from Tory MPs who pointed out that retired US military figures had claimed the Taliban had for many years been an arm of Pakistan’s security forces, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate. The chair of the defence select committee, Tobias Ellwood, said US forces had found Osama bin Laden, the late al-Qaida leader, inside Pakistan just miles down the road from the country’s equivalent of Sandhurst.

Yusuf retorted that in its fight against Tehrik-i-Taliban, Pakistan’s Taliban, his country had suffered 80,000 casualties and an estimated $150bn in losses.

He also hit back at claims that Islamabad had allowed a porous border to give Taliban militants refuge in Pakistan away from US forces. He said his country had made repeated offers to Afghanistan, including in 2011 to police the border jointly, and in the end had constructed a border fence that was now 97% complete.

“Pakistan has been the victim of the war in terror over the past two decades and has been the only country that was speaking the truth,” he said. He added that Pakistan had told Nato and the US not to try to achieve a military victory, but that the allied forces had aimed for a total triumph. “We said they live in a bubble and don’t have the pulse of the people and it was corrupt.

“We cannot signal to the Afghans that the only ones that matter are those that are fortunate enough to be associated with western and international organisations.

“If the world repeats the mistakes of the 90s, the results will not be better than last time. If we again find the easy path and say ‘we are done and out of here,’ the international legitimacy of the western world will disappear in one second,” he said.

“We will have a humanitarian crisis, we will have instability and we will have a security vacuum that terrorists may fill, again targeting Pakistan first and the western world second.”

Yusuf complained that Pakistan had been excluded from talks in Doha between the Taliban and the US. “We were never asked when the deadlines for troop withdrawal were agreed. We were talking about a ‘responsible withdrawal’, which means political settlement before the withdrawal,” said.

He accused the west of turning Pakistan into a scapegoat “when the real problems on the ground – a lack of trust, corruption, an army not able to stand up – were completely ignored”.