The opening of the ‘Heart of Asia’ conference in the capital today was marked by a warm welcome from Pakistani authorities to visiting dignitaries from India, Afghanistan, China among other Asian countries.
The theme of the conference, jointly hosted by Pakistan and Afghanistan, is 'enhanced cooperation for countering security threats and promoting connectivity in the Heart of Asia region.'
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani was greeted by a full reception which included the prime minister, the army, air and navy chiefs as well as the defence minister.
Ghani arrived at the Nur Khan airbase to a resounding 21-gun salute and the melody of the Afghan and Pakistani national anthems. He was then escorted in a limousine to the foreign office, where leaders discussed Afghanistan.
Also in the spotlight today was Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj, who arrived in the capital last night in order to participate in today’s discussion.President of Afghanistan Ashraf Ghani opened his speech by expressing gratitude to Pakistan for "hosting millions of Afghan refugees over decades".
But his speech quickly turned to the perils and origins of the refugee problem and he talked about the ‘unintended consequences’ of Pakistan’s military operations.
"Unfortunately, recent events in Pakistan have forced us to host close to 350,000 to 500,000 Pakistani refugees on our soil. The refugee issue is a common issue, like other issues that confront us," Ghani said.
He lauded Pakistan's decision to launch operations against militancy, but said the action had "created unintended consequences bringing about the displacement of a significant number of these groups onto our soil".
"There no historical precedent for solving this problem. The quarrel of these people is not with the government of Afghanistan or its people. We are fighting on behalf of all of you," he told the conference, "But we are the ones who are daily suffering some of the worst atrocities, including the butchering of our children and elderly who are totally innocent."
He believed it prudent to name the problems plaguing the region in order to formulate a plan of action for regional cooperation along the lines Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif earlier suggested.
The Taliban which began as an Afghan phenomena have become a regional phenomena, the Afghan president said.
"The Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan launched a vicious attack on children in Peshawar for which they robustly responded. But that very response brought them onto our country. Until now we have launched 40 operations through our Special Forces against them... What is the nature of the Taliban and how do we deal with it?"
"What is driving the conflict?" the Afghan president asked. "Is it insurgency or are we dealing with a much larger conflict?"
"The first driver of conflict is regional and international terror groups."
"Al Qaeda, Daesh and terrorists from China, Russia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, the Middle East are all, unfortunately, present on our soil."
'We are the ones who are daily suffering some of the worst atrocities, including the butchering of our children and elderly.'
Referring to recent terror incidents in Istanbul, Paris, Sharm-el-Shaikh and San Bernardino, he said,"We do have a problem. It is a global and regional problem it requires us to focus on it systematically and coherently."
Ghani called for a mechanism of regional cooperation to examine "how the networks of terror coordinate, co-finance, what is their linkage with the criminal economy, how is radicalism shaping and maligning our holy religion and our opportunities for global engagement and dialogue."
The Afghan president stressed the need to recognise that terrorism "while morally an aberration has become a sociological system it has a distinctive ecology of competition and cooperation. It has a morphology ─ it is changing its form very rapidly ─ If Al Qaeda is version one, Daesh is version six ─ And the worst feature of it is its pathology."
'If Al Qaeda is version one, Daesh is version six.'
He said terror groups now used violence to "overawe in order to make the news, in order to put fear into the hearts of people," and used violence for the sake of violence.
While non-state actors have been used in the past, he called for participants to "distance ourselves from non-state actors because the word of states is the word of predictability."
State-to-state, political-to-political, military-to-military, economic-to-economic and intelligence-to-intelligence cooperation are central to the Pak-Afghan relationship, he said.
"We need to create a framework for comprehensive cooperation so that, in light of drivers of conflict, we can fashion solutions that are going to be lasting. Peace is not equivalent to reconciliation. It requires dealing with all the drivers of conflict so that a multidimensional peace, that truly will ensure that all of us live in harmony and can count on each other for enforcing an agreed set of rules of the game, is essential."
"Nawaz and I both do not believe in blame games. We would like to suggest mechanisms of verification as to what type of actors threaten our common interests because with a proper regime of verification, we can fashion the instruments of cooperation."
He said there had been "considerable uncertainty whether Pakistan would truly acknowledge a sovereign Afghan state with its legitimate government and constitution."
Addressing PM Nawaz, he said, "Your words today have gone a very long way to assure us in this regard and that opens up the possibility for sustained dialogue among us."
He appealed to Afghanistan's neighbours, near and far, to help contain terrorists.
"Without rules of the game where states respect the rights and obligations of mutual sovereignty and cooperate in the states' relationship we will have enormous difficulty containing terrorists."
He called for a meeting regarding regional cooperation in line with what Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif earlier suggested, in order to give it "concrete shape and movement forward".
The dignified return of refugees, he said, is absolutely central to regional cooperation, adding that it required coordination in terms of "elimination of the threats that currently haunt us".
"We could generate double-digit growth and poverty elimination," if this happens, he said.
Recalling a speech in Beijing last year, Ghani said: "I spoke of four transitions: The political transition, the security transition, the economic transition and, most significantly, the transition to turn the culture of the state to being citizen focused."He presented a run-down of the part Afghanistan played to establish regional cooperation in 2015:
- Turkmen railways, transmission lines, highways, gas pipelines and oil pipelines reaching Afghanistan
- TAPI pipeline to be inaugurated in Turkmenistan
- Transmission line from Turkmenistan to Afghanistan and Pakistan
- Gas pipeline accords, including CASA-1000
- Charbahar port which India and Iran jointly invested in
- Five-Nation agreements on railways with China
- Highway programme to link Herat to Iran, Turkmenistan and will open way for Iran to Tajikistan and China
- Special economic zones planned in each of Afghanistan’s nine airports between 2016-2032 which will be able to earn revenue of $32 billion
- India-Afghanistan Friendship Dam to operate starting spring 2016
- Next year, will generate 242 megawatts of power ─ 42MW from hydro, 100MW from natural gas, 100MW from solar energy and
"In short, Afghanistan is rapidly moving towards regional integration towards Central Asia, East Asia and West Asia."
"By contrast, our ambitious projects of cooperation for transit and linkages to Pakistan have still remained at the level of conception and aspiration. I hope this conference results in significant movement in this domain."
"We inherited a deep recession bordering on a depression... We imposed an austerity program and met all our agreements including, for the first time all the revenue agreements, creating the ground for launching a stimulus package and a true growth series of programmes."
He said the packages would ensure the Afghan economy moved into a south reliance system, in which "our location, natural wealth, water, land and entrepreneurial energies of our people will be harnessed".
He said 36 per cent of Afghans live below the poverty line of $1.25. If the line were $2, he said, almost 70pc of Afghans would be below it.
“Poverty elimination is our most significant goal and I'm convinced that regional cooperation could allow us to have the types of growth that could allow us to tackle the most fundamental weakness ─ the poverty and exclusion of women, youth and the poor.”
Speaking of the political transition in Afghanistan, he said, “We took the unusual step of forming a government of national unity."
"We have learned from 300 years of discord that politics must become a win-win formula, not a lose-lose proposition and that is an important part of the new political culture.
"As part of this again I strongly reiterate our commitment to lasting and just peace within which all movements that resort to arms convert themselves to political parties and participate in the political process legitimately," he said.
"Violence is not the way in a democratic society," Ghani asserted.
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