By Malou Francisco
EBC Europe correspondent
Eagle News Service
BONN, Germany (Eagle News) — The former President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai proposed ways of establishing lasting peace and stability in his country, making it a place of international cooperation and not confrontation.
He made it clear that success can only happen if the Afghans are the ones truly in-charge of the peace process and their internal affairs.
“Peace can come only when the United States and the neighboring Pakistan along with the other stake-holders genuinely and sincerely support the efforts,” he explained at this year’s Global Media Forum held in Bonn. Germany. This year’s theme was on global inequalities.
Speaking at the forum organized and sponsored by Deutsche Welle, Germany’s public international broadcaster, Karzai thanked the US and its allies for helping rebuild his country after the cold war.
However, he cited that the prolongation of war and the lack of results had given rise to extremism, cynicism, fanaticism, and further suffering of the Afghans, and stressed that a military solution is not valid anymore.
Karzai became the head of state of Afghanistan in December 2001 after the Taliban government was overthrown. In 2002 he was appointed the interim President of the Afghan Transitional Administration and became the President after the 2004 presidential election.
“Afghanistan must regain ownership of the peace process and sovereignty overs its affairs – hold free and fair elections – convene a traditional grand council that decides on vital issues,” he cited as one of the conditions that must be met to attain true peace and stability in his country.
Karzai said that it was also important to “develop new security mechanism through collaboration between major international and regional actors where Afghanistan is seen as a place of cooperation and not confrontation.”
This was in view of what he called a new world order of interaction due to recent developments in inter-national relations.
-Dangers of extremism-
“The use of extremism as an instrument of policy leads to further suffering of the Afghan people. Pakistan must recognize the danger and join hands in addressing the issue and other issues affecting the two countries,” Karzai explained as he appealed to the people of Pakistan to recognize the danger of extremism.
The former Afghanistan head of state noted that decades of use of extremism and as an instrument of policy has caused the long suffering of the people of both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Towards the end of his speech at GMF, Karzai called on Germany to convene another conference on Afghanistan similar to the one held in Bonn in 2001 where international political leaders gathered to agree on new leadership structures for Afghanistan.
The Global Media Forum is a yearly conference that focuses on the role of media in tackling global is-sues, attended by over 2000 representatives from the media, education, business, government, and civil society sectors. Organized by the German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle, the GMF 2018 was held on June 11- 13, 2018 at the World Convention Center Bonn.