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Afghanistan conference opens, hopes for peace talks slim
A conference aimed at shoring up support for war-ravaged Afghanistan opened in the Pakistani capital on Tuesday, with a top Afghan official calling for an urgent, united response to the menace of militancy threatening the world.
The “Heart of Asia” meeting, an annual gathering of Asian and other countries, comes months after the first, inconclusive talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban.
“The wave of terrorist activities, including those of Daesh in various parts of the region and the world, once again reminds us of the gravity of this menace confronting today’s humanity and the urgency for a united position against this evil phenomenon,” Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister Hikmat Khalil Karzai told the conference.
The Islamic State militant group is also known as Daesh.
The two-day meeting is expected to focus on energy, infrastructure and investment deals to shore up commitment to Afghanistan but the threat of an intensifying Taliban insurgency will hang over proceedings with hopes dim for a resumption of peace talks soon.
The Afghan Taliban and the government held inaugural talks in Pakistan in July, but the effort to end the 14-year insurgency stalled when after news leaked that Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar had been dead for two years.
News of Omar’s death triggered a violent split in the Taliban, further undermining hopes for the negotiations.
Last week, the new leader of the main Afghan Taliban faction, Omar’s deputy, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, was reported killed or wounded by rivals.
A weekend audio message claiming to be from Mansour refuted the reports, but some Taliban have questioned its authenticity.
“UNDECLARED WAR”
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani will attend the second day of the conference on Wednesday.
Hope for better ties between Afghanistan and Pakistan after Ghani was inaugurated were quickly dashed, largely because of a series of bomb attacks in Kabul in August.
Many Afghans, including Ghani’s political opponents, accuse Pakistan of backing the Taliban, restricting Ghani’s efforts to improve relations with Pakistan after years of acrimony.
Pakistan denies supporting militants fighting the Afghan government and says it wants a peaceful neighbour over its western border.
On Monday, Ghani said Afghanistan and Pakistan had been fighting a 14-year-long “undeclared war”.
Each nation accuses the other of supporting insurgents across their border as proxy forces.
On a more positive note, Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj will attend the Islamabad gathering.
The first visit by India’s top diplomat to Pakistan in three years raises hopes that relations between the nuclear-armed rivals might improve.
Their national security advisers met on the weekend in Bangkok, three months after cancelling talks.
The two countries have fought three wars since independence from British colonial rule in 1947.
Their rivalry has spilled into Afghanistan, where Pakistan is deeply suspicious of increasing Indian influence.
India and many Afghans say Pakistan supports the Afghan insurgency to maintain influence there
Written by: Reuters
The Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW) organization has reported that the rains and floods of the last week have claimed the lives of many Afghan and incurred huge financial losses.
According to the organization, a total of 1,500 families have suffered as a result of the recent floods and hundreds of livestock have also been lost.
IRW added that following the recent rains, 900 houses were partially or completely destroyed and 93,000 hectares of agricultural land was damaged.
This comes amid an ongoing economic crisis in Afghanistan which has left millions of people reliant on aid.
The disaster management ministry meanwhile confirmed earlier that 99 people died and 64 others were injured as a result of the heavy rains.
Russia said on Sunday U.S. lawmakers’ support for $60.84 billion more in aid for Ukraine showed that Washington was wading much deeper into a hybrid war against Moscow that would end in humiliation on a par with the Vietnam or Afghanistan conflicts.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said it was clear that the United States wanted Ukraine “to fight to the last Ukrainian” including with attacks on Russian sovereign territory and civilians, Reuters reported.
“Washington’s deeper and deeper immersion in the hybrid war against Russia will turn into a loud and humiliating fiasco for United States such as Vietnam and Afghanistan,” Zakharova said.
Russia, she said, will give “an unconditional and resolute response” to the U.S. move to get more involved in the Ukraine war.
The United States lost more than 58,000 military personnel in the 1955-75 Vietnam War, which ended with Communist North Vietnam’s victory and takeover of the South, while hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed.
In the 2001-2021 war in Afghanistan, the U.S. reported 2,459 dead and over 20,000 wounded in the conflict which ended with the withdrawal of U.S.-led coalition forces and return to power of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA).
Iran’s special representative for Afghanistan, Hasan Kazemi Qomi, said on Sunday that water is an important factor in the expansion of bilateral relations, expressing hope that the flow of water to his country will continue.
Qomi said this in a meeting with Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs Amir Khan Muttaqi in Kabul, the ministry said in a statement.
The envoy expressed gratitude for removing obstacles to the flow of water from the Helmand River to Sistan and Baluchestan province of Iran.
Meanwhile, Muttaqi noted that there were good rains in the country this year, as a result of which, after several years of severe drought, Helmand River’s water flowed to Nimroz province of Afghanistan and into Sistan and Baluchestan province of Iran.
He assessed the relations between Afghanistan and Iran as “friendly and positive” and hoped relations will expand further in various fields.
During the meeting, Iran’s envoy also thanked the Islamic Emirate for its stance on Israel’s attacks on Gaza and for having condemned the attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus.
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