Thaindian News

Melbourne, July 14 (ANI): With the coalition forces led by the US finding it hard to quell the Taliban led insurgency in Afghanistan even after nine years of the commencement of the ‘war on terror’, an expert has pointed out that the root cause of the region’s trouble lies in Pakistan, which is the breeding ground of Muslim extremism in South Asia.

According to Amin Saikal, professor of political science and director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (the Middle East and Central Asia) at the Australian National University, the international community must focus more on Pakistan, which has been nurturing Taliban, in order to resolve the Afghan crisis.

He pointed out that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) as part of country’s foreign policy had initially forged ties between Al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban.

“This was all part of a strategy to use radical Islamism as an instrument of foreign policy in promoting Pakistan’s regional influence over India and Iran,” Saikal wrote in his opinion piece in The Age.

“If Australia and its Western allies want to fight terrorism emanating from Afghanistan, it is imperative for them to focus more on Pakistan militarily than on Afghanistan,” he added.

With problems like poor governance, corruption, ethnic, tribal and sectarian divisions and a ‘narco-economy’ adding to the ongoing insurgency in the war torn country, what people in Afghanistan need the most at this juncture is political and ideological reform, he wrote.

“What Afghans need most is structural political reforms, institution building, a relevant ideology of national unity and reconstruction to provide them employment and improved living conditions, and therefore human security,” Saikal said. (ANI)