In the Pakistan-Afghanistan match played in the United Arab Emirates, a worse situation than the Pakistan-India match arose when the Afghan spectators lost their temper after seeing their team losing in the match and started rioting in the stadium.
Pakistan has always supported Afghanistan on the international front. When the 20-year war ended during the reign of Imran Khan, it was the Pakistani people who were calling the USA a failure because America had not gained anything from the long war.
Afghanistan has been suffering from a continuous civil war for a long time. After Taliban regain the rule it was expected that now the war torn nation would have a sigh of relief and with this hope Pakistan maintained its position that the establishment of peace in Afghanistan is actually the guarantee of Pakistan’s peace, but the Afghans may not have understood this.
When Pakistan’s Naseem Shah won the hearts of the Pakistanis by hitting 2 sixes in the last over, the Afghan spectators rioted in the stadium and raised chairs and hit the Pakistani spectators. Videos of the incident went viral.
Later, each spectator who vandalized in the stadium was fined 3,000 dirhams by the UAE government, which is 2 lakh rupees per person according to Pakistani calculations. The government warned the rioting spectators that repeating the same in the future could be punished with imprisonment and deportation.
Dubai police arrested 97 Afghans for rioting in Sharjah Stadium and surprisingly 117 Afghans from other parts of the UAE were also arrested for scuffling with Pakistanis.
The commotion of the 391 people arrested, the attacks on Pakistanis expats, and the scuffling is a matter of concern for both Pakistan and Afghanistan. Why is the Afghan nation so hostile to the Pakistanis? Isn’t the fact that the two countries are Muslims enough to show mutual solidarity?
Pakistan is a country that has been providing shelter and employment to million of Afghan refugees and whenever there is a problem for the Afghan people in their country they cross the border and reach Pakistan because they hope that they will get relief from here.
Despite sheltering millions of Afghan refugees, Pakistan is subjected to cross-border terrorism. Afghan soil is used for terrorism and the Taliban government is unable to control these issues.
The question is why the Afghan nation does not value Pakistan despite giving shelter to around 4 million refugees for 40 years? Why is the Pakistani flag burnt in anti-Pakistan processions? And why are our embassies attacked?
In fact, the Afghan nation is a nation that believes more in individual friendship, enmity and personal or tribal interest. These people could not learn to think like a nation till date. Their national interest has also been subordinated to group interests.
This is the reason, when a Pakistani has relations with a Pashtun, the Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks consider it as a declaration of war by the Pakistanis. The same concept is also found among Uzbeks, Tajiks and Hazaras.
These sectarian animosities have become so entrenched among the people of Afghanistan that they never react as a nation. Due to this, Pakistan faced difficulties in maintaining relations with them and gradually all the tribes of the Afghan nation turned against Pakistan.
Liberal and leftist Afghans resented Pakistan when Pakistan was supporting jihad. Then, when the support of the Taliban started, the Mujahideen, who were mostly Pashtuns, also changed and finally, when Pakistan supported the US after 9/11, the Taliban also started expressing their displeasure with Pakistan.
As a nation, Afghans have to understand that the people of Pakistan have nothing to do with foreign policy matters because governments come and go and each government has a different stance. People have to have a consensus among themselves because both nation are Muslim.They also have to understand that when spectators vandalize after losing a match at the international level, what is the impact on the international level? How it destroy the image of a nation? We hope that such incidents will not take place in the future
