Stage set for Afghan president’s key trip to Pakistan

KABUL, ISLAMABAD

The stage is set for Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani’s extraordinary trip to neighboring Pakistan later this week amid deep mistrust and longstanding unresolved issues between Kabul and Islamabad.

Ahead of the trip, officials in both countries have raised the possibility of a reset in ties towards normalization amid an alleged Pakistan-backed Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan that is halfway through its 18th year.

Ghani will pay his first official visit to Pakistan since Prime Minister Imran Khan took office last August.

The Afghan president will arrive on June 27 and hold talks with Khan and also meet with President Arif Alvi, a senior Foreign Ministry official told Anadolu Agency.

The two sides are likely to sign several memoranda of understanding to improve ties, he added, without providing details.

Ghani last visited Islamabad during the Heart of Asia conference in 2015.

He had sought to improve ties with Islamabad, but they remained tense, with the two countries accusing each other of allowing militants to shelter in their border regions and launch attacks in their countries.

"President Ghani’s visit to Islamabad will improve ties between Pakistan and Afghanistan and will begin a new era between the two neighbors," Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told reporters in the resort town of Bhurban near Islamabad during an Afghan peace conference.

In December 2018, Pakistan’s premier claimed that his country had helped the U.S. bring the Afghan Taliban to the negotiation table.

"Pakistan has helped in the dialogue between the Taliban and the U.S. in Abu Dhabi. Let us pray that this leads to peace and ends almost three decades of suffering of the brave Afghan people," Khan said on Twitter.

He promised that Islamabad will do everything it can to further the peace process.

- Cautious optimism

Ghani has publicly accused Pakistan of orchestrating an "undeclared war on Afghanistan," a claim Islamabad denies.

''We do not need to suddenly get hopeless or optimistic, but we should move ahead carefully to reach a practical roadmap that is acceptable to the masses in both Afghanistan and Pakistan,'' Ghani said earlier this month as he vowed to open a "historic chapter" in ties with Pakistan.

As a former World Bank economist, Ghani’s economic policies are credited at home with ending or minimizing an otherwise overwhelming reliance on Pakistan for trade. He has also planned a number of water management projects in Afghanistan that are believed to be opposed across the border in Pakistan.

Writer and political analyst Mohammad Ashiqullah Yaqub told Anadolu Agency that the two countries have a lot to gain from improving ties and overcoming the mistrust.

“Both sides should dispel mistrust and promote peace and development that will eventually benefit Kabul and Islamabad. And for Afghanistan, its immediate neighbor Pakistan is the first natural and sustainable option for trade and cooperation,” he said.

Pakistan on Saturday hosted a day-long Afghan peace conference ahead of Ghani’s visit to Islamabad.

Qureshi said the visit by some 57 key Afghan leaders and Ghani's visit is a clear signal that Kabul and Islamabad are on the same page. He said his country supports the peace process in Afghanistan and wants to build good ties with its neighbors.

"My first visit after assuming office again in August 2018 was to Kabul. I have since visited Kabul three times," Qureshi said.

“I also visited other regional countries, including China, Russia, Iran, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman and the UAE in an effort to build a regional consensus on the ongoing peace process.”