ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's foreign office listed a number of diplomatic engagements with Arab countries since the beginning of the year in its weekly media briefing on Thursday.
The country has always enjoyed close defense, diplomatic and economic relations with Middle Eastern nations, though it has tried to further strengthened these ties under the current dispensation.
Addressing a news conference, the ministry's spokesperson Asim Iftikhar Ahmad said Secretary General of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Nayef bin Falah Al-Hajraf visited Pakistan on the invitation of Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on January 5.
"Besides delegation-level talks with the foreign minister, the secretary general met with the minister for finance and revenue, and prime minister’s advisor for commerce and investment," he said. "The visit provided an opportunity to review Pak-GCC relations and foster enhanced collaboration in diverse fields, with a renewed focus on trade and economic cooperation between Pakistan and GCC member states."
Ahmad said a "strong business delegation" led by the chairman of Oman Chamber of Commerce and Industries also visited the country and met the president, prime minister and other senior government functionaries, adding the interactions "imparted further impetus to bilateral economic relationship" between the two countries.
Apart from that, the Pakistani foreign minister inaugurated an international seminar on combating corruption, human rights and sustainable development which was organized in collaboration with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation's Independent Permanent Human Rights Commission and the United Nation in Islamabad.
"The international seminar was attended by more than 200 international and national stakeholders," said the foreign office spokesperson. "Based on its deliberations, the Islamabad Declaration on Combating Corruption for the full realization of all Human Rights and Sustainable Development was adopted. The Seminar was part of Pakistan’s persistent efforts to strengthen international framework against corruption, recovery of stolen assets, promotion and protection of all human rights, and achievement of inclusive and sustainable development."
He added a 25-member delegation of the Armed Forces Command and Staff College from Saudi Arabia also visited the foreign ministry on January 10.
"The delegation was briefed on key aspects of Pakistan’s foreign policy including our commitment to forge deeper cooperation with Saudi Arabia," he continued.
The Pakistani foreign minister recently announced that the country was scheduled to hold the next OIC meeting in its federal capital on March 22, adding that delegates from Muslim countries would also be invited attend the country's 75th Republic Day parade the next day as state guests.
Pakistan starts new year with diplomatic push with Arab nations
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Pakistan starts new year with diplomatic push with Arab nations
- The country hosted the secretary general of Gulf Cooperation Council to 'foster enhanced collaboration in diverse fields'
- The Pakistan foreign office also briefed a Saudi armed forces delegation on its commitment to forge deeper cooperation with the kingdom
Pakistan’s Afghan salvo risks turning ‘open war’ into long crisis
- Nuclear-armed Pakistan has a formidable military of 660,000 active personnel, backed by a fleet of 465 combat aircraft
- But the Taliban have the option to lean on insurgent groups like the TTP and the BLA to move beyond border skirmishes
KARACHI: Weeks after the Taliban’s lightning offensive in 2021 wrested control of Afghanistan from a US-led military coalition, Pakistan’s then intelligence chief flew into the capital Kabul for talks, where the serving lieutenant general told a reporter: “Don’t worry, everything will be okay.”
Five years on, Islamabad — long seen as a patron of the Taliban — is locked in its heaviest fighting with the group, which Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif described on Friday (February 27) as an “open war.”
The turmoil means that a wide swathe of Asia — from the Gulf to the Himalayas — is now in flux, with the United States building up a military deployment against Afghanistan’s neighbor Iran even as relations between Pakistan and arch rival India remain on edge after four days of fighting last May.
At the heart of the conflict with Afghanistan is Pakistan’s accusation that the Afghan Taliban provides support to militant groups, including the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), that have wreaked havoc across inside the South Asian country.
The Afghan Taliban, which has previously fought alongside the TTP, denies the charge, insisting that Pakistan’s security situation is its internal problem.
The disagreement is a reflection of starkly incompatible positions taken by both sides, as Pakistan expected compliance after decades of support to the Taliban, which did not see itself beholden to Islamabad, analysts said.
“We all know that the government in Pakistan supported the Taliban, the Afghan Taliban for many years, in the 90s and the 2000s, and provided havens to them during the period where the US and NATO were in Afghanistan.
So there’s a very close relationship between the Taliban and Pakistan,” said Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, a political scientist at the University of Pittsburgh and an Afghanistan expert.
“It’s really surprising and shocking to many of us to see how quickly this relationship deteriorated,” she said.
Although tensions have simmered along their rugged 2,600-km (1,615-mile) frontier for months, following clashes last October, Friday’s fighting is notable because of Pakistan’s use of warplanes to hit Taliban military installations instead of confining the attacks to the militants it allegedly harbors.
These include targets deep inside the country in Kabul, as well as the southern city of Kandahar, the seat of Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, according to Pakistan military spokesman Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry.
The clashes are unlikely to end there.
“I think in the immediate aftermath, I think hostilities will subside. There will be, I hope there will be a ceasefire through mediation. But I do not see these tensions subsiding in the foreseeable future,” said Abdul Basit, an expert on militancy and violent extremism at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan has a formidable military of 660,000 active personnel, backed by a fleet of 465 combat aircraft, several thousand armored fighting vehicles and artillery pieces.
Across the border, the Afghan Taliban has only around 172,000 active military personnel, a smattering of armored vehicles and no real air force.
But the battle-hardened group, which took on a phalanx of Western military powers in 2001 and outlasted them, has the option to lean on insurgents like the TTP and the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), moving beyond border skirmishes.
Based in Pakistan’s largest and poorest province of Balochistan that borders both Iran and Afghanistan, the BLA has been at the center of a decades-long insurgency, which in recent years has staged large coordinated attacks.
Pakistan has long accused India of backing the insurgents, a charge repeatedly denied by New Delhi, which has retained a robust military deployment along the border since last May.
Although a raft of countries with influence — including China, Russia, Turkiye and Qatar — have indicated an openness to help mediate the conflict, all such efforts have been met with limited success so far.
