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Afghanistan still on top of NATO agenda
NATO Chief has said that Afghanistan was still high on its agenda as Obama called NATO as an effective partner in the war against terrorism.
“Afghanistan is high on our agenda. Afghanistan is our biggest military operation ever,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Monday after his meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama.
“It shows the importance of unity in North America and Europe, because our military operation in Afghanistan is a direct response to the terrorist attack against the United States on 9/11. And European, Canadian soldiers have fought together with the American soldiers in Afghanistan for many, many years,” he said.
“We had an excellent conversation about Afghanistan, in which NATO obviously has been an extraordinary partner with the United States,” Obama said.
“The coalition there continues to focus on assisting the government and the Afghan national security forces, building up capacity, pushing back against the Taliban, and helping Afghans to provide security for their own country and, hopefully, being able to arrive at some sort of political settlement that would end decades of conflict and violence there,” Obama continued.
The White House said that NATO has been an effective partner of the U.S. in the war against terrorism in Afghanistan.
“We welcome the valuable contribution that NATO has made to our efforts in Afghanistan. Much of the progress that we have made in Afghanistan would not have been possible without the significant contributions that NATO has made to that effort,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest has told reporters.
“It is that effective partnership that allowed the United States to succeed in decimating core Al-Qaeda, that previously operated with virtual impunity in the Afghanistan and Pakistan region.
“And we’ve made enormous progress in helping the Afghan government begin to assume much more control for the security situation in their own country,” he said.
“The United States and our military personnel in Afghanistan are going to continue to focus on their two missions, which are counter terrorism and training Afghan security forces,” Earnest added.
Former president Hamid Karzai said in a meeting with Iran’s ambassador and special representative, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, that education of girls was a “vital issue” for Afghanistan.
Karzai said he appreciated Iran’s cooperation and its standing with the Afghan people, especially Iran’s contributions to education in Afghanistan.
During the meeting, Karzai said peace and stability in the region are in the interest of all regional countries.
A shipment of humanitarian aid from Uzbekistan was handed over on Thursday to the local officials of Balkh province in the trade port of Hairatan.
Local authorities said the aid, which includes flour, oil, wheat, sugar and meat, has been handed over by Uzbekistan’s Surkhandarya governor to the governor of Balkh.
The governor of Surkhandarya stated the purpose of sending this aid was to support the people of Afghanistan and stressed the need for the development of good relations between the two countries.
Islamabad’s special envoy for Afghanistan Asif Durrani said on Wednesday that Pakistan has suffered more due to Afghanistan’s internal situation than Pakistan has suffered in three wars with India in terms of blood spilt and finances drained.
Durrani said at a one-day International Conference titled “Pakistan in the Emerging Geopolitical Landscape”, which was organized by the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad (ISSI) and the German Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES), that over 80,000 Pakistanis died in the two decades of the War on Terror and that his country was still counting its dead and injured.
“After the withdrawal of NATO forces, it was hoped that peace in Afghanistan would bring peace to the region. However, such expectations were short-lived,” he said.
He also stated that attacks by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militant group on Pakistan’s border areas increased by 65 percent, while suicide attacks increased by 500 percent.
“The TTP’s enhanced attacks on Pakistan while using Afghan soil have been a serious concern for Pakistan. Another worrying aspect is the participation of Afghan nationals in these attacks,” he said.
Durrani also said Pakistan had suffered geopolitically since the Soviet Union invaded the neighboring country.
“The post-9/11 world order has negatively impacted Pakistan. Apart from losing 80,000 citizens’ lives, including 8,000 law enforcement agency personnel, the country’s economic opportunity cost is estimated at $150 billion,” Durrani said.
Talking about the future outlook for Pakistan in the regional context, Durrani said that while “our eastern neighbor is likely to continue with its anti-Pakistan pursuits, the western border poses an avoidable irritant in the short to medium term.”
However, he said Pakistan can overcome its difficulties with Afghanistan, including the TTP challenge.
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