Afghan FM Muttaqi reaches Islamabad on three-day visit

Islamabad: Afghanistan's acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi arrived in Islamabad on Wednesday evening on a three-day visit to Pakistan for wide-ranging talks on bilateral matters.

It will be the first visit to Pakistan by an Afghan minister since the Taliban seized control of Kabul on August 15.

Muttaqi is leading a 20-member high-level delegation comprising Minister for Finance Hidayatullah Badri, Minister for Industries and Trade Nooruddin Aziz and senior officials from the aviation ministry.

Pakistan's Special Representative for Afghanistan Mohammad Sadiq, Pakistan Ambassador to Afghanistan Mansoor Khan, Commerce Adviser Abdul Razak Dawood and senior officials welcomed the delegation upon their arrival at Nur Khan Airbase.

The Taliban's representative at the Afghan embassy in Islamabad, Shakaib Ahmad, was also present on the occasion.

During his visit, the Afghan minister will hold formal talks with Pakistani counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi. Muttaqi will also meet special representatives from China, Russia and the US, who are participating in the Troika Plus meeting scheduled for November 11 (tomorrow).

The FO in a statement said that Muttaqi's visit was taking place as a follow-up to Qureshi's visit to Kabul on Oct 21.

“The exchanges will centre on Pakistan-Afghanistan relations with a particular focus on enhanced trade, facilitation of transit trade, cross-border movement, land and aviation links, people-to-people contacts and regional connectivity,” the FO statement said.

A senior diplomat privy to the details said Pakistan was holding a “structured dialogue” on Afghanistan and has taken all the key players on board. On the contrary, the NSAs meeting in New Delhi clearly lacked any clarity and direction.

“Even they did not share any agenda for the Nov 10 meeting and at the last moment tried to again raise the threat that Afghanistan might revert to being a hotbed of terrorism.”

India on Wednesday held a Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan that was attended by National Security Advisers and Secretaries of the National Security Councils of India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. It did not invite Afghanistan.

Making efforts to show its relevance, New Delhi highlighted the “threats arising from terrorism, radicalisation and drug trafficking” in Afghanistan. Of the 12 points discussed at the meeting, four were related to extremism, terrorism, radicalisation and drug trafficking.

“Humanitarian concerns” were the last in order of priority in a statement released at the end of the meeting by the Ministry of External Affairs.

Pointing to the timing by India in holding its dialogue, the diplomatic experts however believe that India tried to become relevant to the Afghan situation, but the fact of the matter was that Pakistan was the key player and was evident by the level of participants for the meeting.

National Security Adviser of Pakistan Moeed Yusuf declined to attend the meeting saying “peace spoiler cannot be a peacemaker”, in an oblique reference to what India has done in Afghanistan over the past two decades and how it used its soil to carry out subversive activities against Pakistan.

China, on the other hand, also declined participation citing “scheduling difficulties” issues.

For Pakistan, the looming humanitarian crisis seems to be the top priority and has also been pointed out by international aid agencies.

Nearly 23 million people, or 55 per cent of the Afghan population, are estimated to be in crisis or experiencing emergency levels of food insecurity between now and March of next year.

The latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report co-led by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP), said that the lives, livelihoods and access to food for 22.8 million people will be severely impacted.

“It is urgent that we act efficiently and effectively to speed up and scale up our delivery in Afghanistan before winter cuts off a large part of the country, with millions of people – including farmers, women, young children and the elderly – going hungry in the freezing winter”, said FAO Director-General QU Dongyu. “It is a matter of life or death”.

The IPC report found that more than one-in-two Afghans will face Phase 3 crisis or Phase 4 emergency levels of acute food insecurity from November through the March lean season, requiring an urgent international response to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe.

“We cannot wait and see humanitarian disasters unfolding in front of us – it is unacceptable”, he said in a statement, made few days back.