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Hamid Karzai claims that the Pakistani government wants to promote “anarchy and weakness” in Afghanistan to ensure the country is “oppressed”.
Speaking to Sky’s Yalda Hakim, the former Afghan president condemned Islamabad’s bombing of his country.
The fighting began at the end of February when Pakistan begins targeting Afghanistan with air strikes they claimed targeted militant strongholds.
The conflict, which the UN estimates has displaced more than 100,000 people, escalated this week when Kabul said 400 people were killed when a missile hit a hospital treating drug addicts.
Karzai – who led Afghanistan between 2002 and 2014 after the Taliban were ousted from power – said he himself had heard the “terrible sounds” of the bombings, that his house was shaking and the area around him was filled with smoke and dust.
The strike, he said, was a “very unfortunate event” in the history of relations between the two countries.
“The Pakistani government cannot coexist with any Afghan government,” he told Sky News.
“They didn’t do this well with the government and the monarchical regime in Afghanistan and then the Republic and then, then another government and then the Republic again, during my time in office, I went there 20 times to seek better relations.”
He claims that the current Pakistani government is repeating the same attempt to paralyze Kabul.
Karzai said: “The unfortunate fact is that the Pakistani government does not want to have sensible, reasonable and civilized relations with Afghanistan.
“They are counting on creating anarchy and weakness and oppression of Afghanistan in these years, for their sake, and this is very wrong. I hope they will change their minds and seek a more stable and civilized relationship with Afghanistan.”
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Afghanistan claims 400 people were killed by Pakistan in attacks on hospitals
The Af-Pak conflict displaced more than 100,000 people
Karzai added that he advised Pakistani leaders to behave “civilized” towards Afghanistan.
“Please stop an approach that has not worked in the past for decades and may not work in the future,” he said.
Pakistan said its strikes “precisely targeted military installations and terrorist support infrastructure, including technical equipment storage and ammunition storage of the Afghan Taliban” and other militants in Kabul and Nangarhar.
It added that the facilities were used to attack innocent Pakistani civilians, and also said that “false and misleading” claims that the sites were attacked were intended to stir up sentiment and cover up “unlawful support for cross-border terrorism”.
