Tribune News Service

New Delhi, November 9

National Security Adviser Ajit Doval on Tuesday met his counterparts from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan on the eve of the first-ever conference of regional NSAs being organised by India to deliberate on the situation in Afghanistan.

The meet, to be attended by eight NSAs, is an attempt to find common ground on five issues on Afghanistan which, if left unattended, will adversely impact all its neighbours. The five problems on which they will try to find common ground are: terrorism, radicalisation, cross-border movement, drug trafficking and vast amount of military weapons left behind by the western forces.

Doval’s meeting with the Tajik NSA Nasrullo Mahmudzoda was significant for people of his ethnicity account for over a quarter of the population.

The Tajik majority areas in Afghanistan include the restive Panjshir province whose rebel leaders Amrullah Saleh and Ahmed Masood had tried to put up a fight against the Taliban.

“There was detailed exchange of views on Afghanistan, with significant convergence of assessments. Concerns were expressed on the sharp increase in terrorist threats from. Tajik side highlighted gravity of situation in Afghanistan,” sources said about the meeting.

On the bilateral side, discussions took place on deepening cooperation in areas like defence, border management and border infrastructure development.

Doval also met the Uzbek NSA Victor Makhmudov to especially discuss the problem of extremism. Uzbeks account for nine per cent of Afghan population and anti-Taliban leaders such as Abdul Rashid Dostum and Rasul Pahlawan are from this stock.

“Both sides emphasised the need for neighbours to ensure unhindered access of humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan. They felt that the legitimacy of any Afghan government within Afghanistan was important before the issue of its international recognition,” said the sources.

Pakistan had cried off from the meeting when the idea was initially broached, the Chinese said “scheduling reasons made it inconvenient” for its representative to attend the ‘Delhi Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan’.

This means that the Dialogue, to be chaired by NSA Doval, will be attended by top security officials of Russia, Iran and all five Central Asian countries—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. All the NSAs are slated to call on PM Narendra Modi on Wednesday before sitting down for the meeting that will have simultaneous translation in Russian and Persian.

Incidentally, around the same time, Taliban Acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi will be in Islamabad to reciprocate Shah Mehmood Qureshi’s visit to Kabul last month. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has also met Taliban Acting Deputy Prime Minister Mullah Baradar twice though not in Kabul.

New US Afghan envoy to visit India

The new US Special Representative for Afghanistan Tom West will visit India, Russia and Pakistan to discuss the way forward on Afghanistan. West is currently in Brussels discussing the issue with NATO and EU leaders and said he would be in Pakistan “later this week”.

US State Department spokesperson Ned Price indicated the agenda when he said at a briefing, “Together with our partners, he will continue to make clear the expectations that we have of the Taliban and of any future Afghanistan government.”

The US, as is India, wants the government in Kabul to include other ethnicities such as Uzbeks, Tajiks, Hazaras and Turkmen; make firm promises to check trans-national radicalism and give due place to women in society. “The international community must act together to be effective,” West said before leaving for the tour.