Afghanistan and its partners need a reality check: Maleeha Lodhi

NEW YORK (92 News) – Pakistan's permanent representative to UN Maleeha Lodhi said that those who speak of changing mindsets (about terrorism) need to look within and their own record of subversion against Pakistan as our capture of an Indian spy has amply demonstrated and proved beyond any shadow of doubt. Addressing a high-level Security Council meeting at the UN, she said that Afghanistan and its partners, especially the US, need to address challenges inside Afghanistan rather than shift the onus for ending the conflict onto others. “Those who imagine sanctuaries outside need a reality check,” she stressed. Lodhi went on to say that after 17 years of war it’s “more than evident” that neither the Afghan government nor the Taliban can win militarily. “The continuing resort to military force and escalation of the conflict without an accompanying political and diplomatic strategy ... will produce more violence, not a political solution,” she said. “It is not enough to pay lip service to a negotiated settlement and then do little other than exercise a strategy of force and coercion.” Pakistan's permanent representative to UN blamed the conditions in Afghanistan and the drug trade, which she said brings terrorists $400 million every year, for the insurgency and asserted that they didn't need outside support or sanctuaries because "over 40 percent of the country is under insurgent control, contested or ungoverned."