By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s most senior military officer has urged a visiting American commission reviewing the war in Afghanistan to take account of his country’s experience of the conflict, at a meeting held while Islamabad continues to deal with security challenges along its border with Afghanistan.
Field Marshal Asim Munir, who is both Chief of Defence Forces and Chief of the Army Staff, received a delegation from the US Afghanistan War Commission at General Headquarters in Rawalpindi on Monday, according to the military’s media wing, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR).
The delegation was led by the commission’s co-chairs, Shamila N Chaudhary and Dr Colin F Jackson. The ISPR said the visitors acknowledged Pakistan’s “longstanding role and sacrifices” during the war and welcomed its continuing contribution to regional peace and stability.
The statement said the talks covered Pakistan’s support, the regional security environment and developments in Afghanistan, with a focus on perspectives relevant to the commission’s work.
Field Marshal Munir set out Pakistan’s view of the security dynamics that shaped the conflict and the difficulties his country faced during the long American engagement next door, the statement said. He stressed the need to bring a regional perspective, and Pakistan’s own experience, into any assessment of the war’s strategic, diplomatic and operational dimensions.
The commission is an independent body created by the US Congress in 2021 to examine American decisions in Afghanistan between June 2001 and August 2021. Its final report had been due this month, but the co-chairs announced on 27 August that its mandate had been extended by a year to allow a comprehensive, independent assessment of the 20-year engagement.
American forces left Afghanistan in August 2021, completing their withdrawal a minute before midnight on 30 August. The intervention had begun after the attacks of 11 September 2001 and lasted two decades, during which civilians suffered widespread violence and abuses.
About 800,000 US servicemembers served in Afghanistan. Some 2,238 died and nearly 21,000 were wounded. The United Nations mission in Afghanistan (Unama) recorded more than 40,000 civilians killed and 77,000 wounded in attacks by Taliban insurgents and the Islamic State group, and in operations by Afghan Republic forces and the US-led international coalition. Independent estimates put the number of Afghan security personnel and civilians killed at more than 100,000.
A 2022 Wall Street Journal investigation reported that outsourcing had pushed US military spending since 2001 to $14tn. It said between a third and a half of that went to contractors.
The visit comes at a tense moment on Pakistan’s western frontier. Islamabad has recorded a sharp rise in cross-border militant violence, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, since the Taliban returned to power in Kabul. It has repeatedly urged the Taliban authorities to stop their territory being used to launch attacks inside Pakistan, and maintains that they have failed to act against the groups responsible for attacks on security forces and civilians.
That dispute has become open conflict this year. Pakistan launched air and ground strikes on Taliban and Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) targets inside Afghanistan on 27 February, and Taliban forces retaliated. Pakistan’s defence minister described the situation at the time as “open war”.
The past week has brought a fresh round of fighting. Pakistani jets struck sites in eastern Afghanistan on Monday 21 September. Islamabad said the raids killed 28 militants. Pakistani officials then said Afghan Taliban forces had launched eight drones and shelled border posts on Wednesday. On Friday, Pakistan said at least 13 Afghan Taliban personnel were killed in overnight fighting in the Gulistan sector of Balochistan.
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