Afghan terrorist attacks

Islamabad offers Kabul joint investigation

By Mariana Baabar

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Saturday offered a joint investigation into the recent terrorist attacks in Afghanistan and advised the neigbouring country against indulging in blame-game.

In a statement, the Foreign Office emphasised the need for strengthening border management on the Afghan side.

The Afghan government was also asked to take action against the anti-Pakistan terrorists and engage with Pakistan for concrete cooperation in this regard.

Separately, Pakistan and Afghanistan Saturday made “some” progress during delegation level talks in Kabul at the conclusion of the first meeting of Afghanistan-Pakistan Action Plan for Peace and Solidarity (APAPPS). A joint press release saying the APAPPS will again meet on February 9 showed some progress, while acknowledging that some differences still persist.

The two neighbors also issued a joint press release in December after the first Pakistan-China-Afghanistan Foreign Ministers meeting in China.

Before this in August, the military leadership had put their heads together and issued a joint press release on the sidelines of Quadrilateral Counter-terrorism Coordination Mechanism (QCCM)'s meeting in Tajikistan.

Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa and his Afghan counterpart General Sharif Yaftali had agreed to form a joint working group of the two armies. However, matters turned on their heads after back to back militant attacks in Kabul in which innocent civilians and security forces’ members were killed. Pakistan was blamed for providing safe sanctuaries to the Afghan Taliban.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani tweeted to the US Vice President, “I conveyed to @VP that the attack on our civilians on 1/27 is the 9/11 of Afghanistan. Our resolve to win the peace and war through reforms in our security establishment is ever strong.”

Friends of Pakistan and Afghanistan have also been instrumental in bringing the two neighbours to the negotiating table when misgiving and distrust has reached new heights.

Foreign Secretary Ms Tehmina Janjua headed a high-level delegation, comprising senior civilian and military officials, for a day’s visit to Kabul in a specially charted aircraft. The Afghan side was led by Deputy Foreign Minister Hekmat Khalil Karzai. Janjua and Karzai are well-known to each other and have met several times in the past. They met in August last year in Kabul for delegation-level talks where Pakistan said discussions focused on “ways and means to enhance the level of mutual trust”.

The very next month during the UN General Assembly session in New York the two met on the sidelines when the Afghan deputy foreign minister reiterated that they were committed to strengthening relations with Pakistan, stressing the need for engagement between the two sides at all levels.

During the Saturday’s meeting the entire gambit of the APAPPS (a joint action plan for cooperation in areas of counter-terrorism and reduction of violence, peace and reconciliation, refugees repatriation and joint economic development) came under discussion. “The meeting was held in a cordial environment and both delegations made some progress on the APAPPS.

There are still important areas to be discussed and agreed upon, and both sides remain committed to continuing their discussions to reach an agreement on the APAPPS,” said the joint press release. However, neither side made public the specific important areas where differences persist and will be followed up in Islamabad next week. The Foreign Office of Pakistan for a change was quite active on Twitter, providing updates of the Kabul meeting including posting photographs of Ms Janjua, with hash tag: #pakforpeace #fsinkabul.

In comparison, the Afghan Foreign Office simply posted the joint statement, which soon developed a problem and could not be downloaded.

Unlike photographs of Khalil Karzai meeting other foreign dignitaries on the Afghan spokesman’s twitter handle, no photographs of Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary were posted.