Afghanistan has a “negative strategic relationship” with Pakistan but it is important that this relationship changes, according to Davood Moradian, director-general of the Afghan-istan foreign ministry’s Centre for Strategic Studies.
Speaking at a seminar organised by the New Delhi-based Vivekananda International Foundation, Dr Davood Moradian said the Af-Pak relation can stabilise and become normal only when Afghanistan becomes resilient to Pakistan’s hegemonic designs.
“A stable Afghanistan needs a civilised Pakistan,” he said, noting that appeasement was the only policy the international community had so far applied towards Pakistan. Afghanistan is weak today and it has a fundamental clash of strategic interests with Pakistan. Therefore, there is a need to change the dynamics of this relationship, he added.
“But it is not possible to jump to a positive relationship, we first need to normalise our relations[.] To achieve this we need confidence building measures and mediation [but] even today there is no consensus between Afghanistan and Pakistan,” he said, adding that so far efforts at mediation by the US, Nato and Turkey have failed.
Dr Moradian and other speakers at the seminar dismissed the idea that ethnic differences could lead to the eventual partition of Afghanistan. Dr Laziz Tursunov, a strategic expert from Uzbekistan, also felt that the ethnic divide in Afghanistan would not break up the country.
“There is no ethnic hegemony in Afghanistan[.] A political solution for Afghanistan must be on a broad ethnic basis,” he said.
The seminar saw speakers from India, Afghanistan and Central Asian republics.
Dr Alexander Lukin, director of Moscow-based Centre for East Asian and SCO studies; Dr Lev Tarakov from Kazakhstan; Ambassador TCA Rangachari (Retd.); and Prof. Nirmala Joshi of the India-Central Asia Foundation were among some of the other speakers at the seminar.