Pakistan on August 30 warned of potential spillovers from the Afghan crisis, saying the world would have to deal with a "huge mess” if its advice on the war-torn country was ignored. Pakistan Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry said the world must listen to Pakistan as "in the recent past, Pakistan's advice had not been paid heed to, and if Pakistan and the prime minister's advice was listened to, the situation would have been different."

In an interview with TRT World, which was published by Dawn, the minister said the situation in Afghanistan was "very worrying for Pakistan, recalling that they had to deal with the problems when the Soviet Union left Afghanistan in 1988.

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He said while the Troika Plus, comprising Russia, China, US and Pakistan, had an important role to play in solving the Afghan conflict, the other group consisting of Turkey, Pakistan, Iran and other Central Asian states too needed to take an active role to help resolve the crisis. Chaudhry continued that Pakistan was yet again in a quagmire as the US and NATO forces were leaving Afghanistan. He cautioned that Pakistan was already hosting 3.5 million Afghan refugees, adding that their economy is not strong enough to take more refugees.

"The way Afghanistan has been abandoned in the past and if the world repeats the same mistake, we will have a hub of extremist organisations right at the border of Pakistan which will obviously be hugely worrying for us, he cautioned. The minister insisted that Pakistan was trying its best to stabilise the region as we are working with regional and international powers for an inclusive government in Afghanistan.

Chaudhry said, however, that there was no refugee crisis at the moment. "As far as migrants are concerned, because at this stage the takeover was bloodless, so there isn't a refugee crisis yet and our border is actually normal right now."

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He underlined that Pakistan had a comprehensive strategy to deal with instability as they do not want to repeat the 1977 episode and do not want migrants to get into Pakistan. He stressed that arrangements will be made at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border to deal with the exodus of people. The world has to come to help Pakistan in that situation.

(Edited by : Shoma Bhattacharjee)

First Published:Aug 30, 2021 8:33 PM IST