THE two-day visit of National Security Advisor, Dr Moeed Yusuf, to Afghanistan where he held detailed talks with the Taliban Government leadership was surely productive as it helped enhance understanding between the two countries on important bilateral and regional issues and would pave the way for further strengthening of their ties.
Pakistan and Afghanistan decided to establish a national-level coordination mechanism for enhancing facilitation at border crossing points, pledged to initiate barter trade, renewed their commitment to cement their diplomatic, social and economic ties and vowed to ensure peace and stability in the two neighbouring countries.
The visit and its outcome reflected, once again, Pakistan’s firm resolve to bail out the brotherly country, which faces mounting challenges of security, stability and development due to lop-sided policies and approaches of some influential powers of the globe.
As people of Afghanistan are suffering hugely due to reluctance of these countries to do trade or provide meaningful aid to the country, Dr Moeed Yusuf, understandably, focused his discussion on the prevailing situation in Afghanistan and what role Pakistan can play to mitigate their problems.
He took with him some concrete proposals for strengthening economic engagement to help Afghanistan tackle financial challenges and hopefully the positive result of which would start appearing in the coming weeks and months.
The decisions to work out modalities for barter trade on immediate an basis and form a Committee for enhancing facilitation at border crossing points are expected to give a boost to the bilateral trade that serves the national interests of the two countries because of close proximity and linkages.
It is also encouraging that the two sides also reiterated their commitment to early completion of three major connectivity projects CASA-1000, TAPI and Trans-Afghan Rail project.
As the Taliban enjoy effective control over entire Afghanistan and have demonstrated their ability to restore peace and security in the length and breadth of the country, there are bright prospects for meaningful progress on implementation of these trans-regional projects.
These projects have the potential to improve financial and economic conditions of Afghanistan as royalties would generate revenues, provision of gas and connectivity would ease life of Afghan people and create employment opportunities.
Pakistan is already extending substantial cooperation to Afghanistan in different spheres of life and during the visit it also offered to Afghanistan capacity building and training support in multiple sectors including health, education, banking, customs, railways and aviation among others.
Though there is no official version on security issues, the Advisor must have raised irritants like the negative attitude of Kabul towards the border management project and continued presence of TTP elements on Afghan soil.
There are reports that the Taliban moved firmly against Baluch terrorist groups operating from Afghanistan and one hopes similar operation would be carried out against TTP elements without loss of further time as their renewed activities are causing human and economic losses in Pakistan.
