The United States needs to eliminate safe havens for terrorists in Pakistan if it has to succeed in Afghanistan, the new commander of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation forces in the war-torn country told the US Congress on Tuesday. Lieutenant-General Austin Miller was nominated commander of the NATO-led Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan last month.
Safe havens in Pakistan make it “infinitely more difficult” for the US to secure its national interests, Miller told Senator Dan Sullivan of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “We have to squeeze out safe havens if we’re going to be successful here.”
Pakistan must be part of the solution in Afghanistan, not just diplomatically but also from a security perspective as well, he added. “We should have high expectations that they are part of the solution.”
Miller agreed with a senator who said Pakistan’s actions had been contradictory to “being part of the solution”.
“I see similar behaviour – contradictory – but as we go forward, as we work through the South Asia Strategy, not just from a military standpoint, from – but from a diplomatic standpoint, again, I go back to I believe we ought to have very, very high expectations of them,” the military commander said. Pakistan’s own stability and prosperity will benefit from peace in Afghanistan, he added.
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