Will the meeting in Samarqand lead to a regional consensus on Afghanistan?
Author: Mohammad Qadeer Mesbah, an expert on regional issues (Germany)
In less than two years, this is the fourth meeting on the political, social, economic, and social situation of Afghanistan.
The first meeting titled "Islamabad Initiative for Development and Regional Approach to Afghanistan" was held in Islamabad in September 2021. It was attended by representatives of China, Russia, Iran, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. At the time, Pakistan had a prime minister named Imran Khan who actively sought regional consensus and cleared the face of the Taliban in international forums and even considered the education and training of women against Afghan culture. He thought about the geo-economic occupation and looting of the mines of Afghanistan through the extraction of coal, marble, chromite, lead and lapis lazuli, etc., which was even facilitated by a number of Taliban commanders The Pakistani Foreign Minister considered close coordination with Afghanistan's neighbors as the only solution to stability and humanitarian aid problems and stressed Islamabad's commitment to opening trade gates on Kabul's corridors and transport links.
The second meeting took place in November 2021 in Tehran, where the foreign ministers of Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, and the online foreign ministers of China and Russia participated in person. The Iranian authorities have called the Taliban a real regional movement that opposed American aggression and its proxies. Iran asked the countries of the region to work together and coherently to achieve lasting peace and not jeopardize the formation of an inclusive government, border security, and a political solution with the interim government of Kabul.
The third meeting took place in March 2022 in the People's Republic of China in the presence of the foreign ministers of Pakistan, Iran, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Qatar, and Indonesia. The meeting began with a message from Xi Jinping, in which he said that Afghanistan is a neighbor and a common partner of all participating countries, and we will form a society with a common future because a stable, peaceful, developing, and prosperous Afghanistan is the dream of all the people of this country and meets the common interests of the countries of the region and the world community.
At the third meeting of countries, Russia, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Pakistan, and China openly expressed their dissatisfaction with the existence of terrorist groups like ISIS, Al-Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban, the East Turkistan Movement, drug and arms trafficking, and the issue of recognizing the Taliban government to the satisfaction of the countries mentioned in the region by this group.
Now in Samarqand, Uzbekistan, the fourth meeting of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the countries of the region, according to the previously set agenda, is held, where Sergey Lavrov, Qin Gang, Sirajuddin Mukhriddin, Bakhtiyar Saidov, Hina Rabbani, Amir Hussein Abdullahian are present.
Have practical steps been taken to help resolve the political, economic, social, and security crisis in Afghanistan and the region, as well as to jointly fight terrorism, extremism, drugs, and ISIS, which are among the main concerns of the countries of the region?
It seems that these meetings not only do not provide a practical solution to the problem of political, economic, social security, stability, and development, as well as the phenomena of migration, terror, extremism, terrorism, and drugs but, on the contrary, open a new chapter in the continuation of the crisis. Squeezing the throat of the Pakistani government, there is hardly a day that the Pakistani Taliban does not fuel the destabilization of this country, and the ISIS group is always one of the main problems of the self-proclaimed Taliban government in Kabul. Street uprisings by the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran have caused shortness of breath, while Taiwan and Ukraine have become a new phenomenon of confrontation between the West, China, and Russia, and with the arrival of the Taliban, Takfiri groups with religious instruments have found the courage to make themselves known and create problems for the governments of Central Asia. If these questions cannot find a suitable answer on the agenda of the Samarqand meeting, then it is very likely that the growth and spread of terrorism from the side of invisible forces and the Western bloc will become undesirable consequences that can swallow up the countries of the region very cheaply and simply.