Daily Times

National Security Advisor (NSA) Moeed Yusuf is a lot in the news these days. Buoyed by the success of his new security policy, which finally embraces the now pretty old doctrine of geoeconomics and economic/financial security, he’s now leading a high-level inter-ministerial delegation to Kabul as part of Pakistan’s efforts to avert a humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan. It’s no secret that Islamabad has done a lot to lobby for the Taliban since their takeover of Kabul – a lot more than any other country and perhaps even more than was due. But it’s not immediately clear what flying a whole delegation, with an unelected NSA leading a bunch of elected ministers, to the suffering country itself is going to accomplish.

Quite literally the only thing that can help Afghanistan right now is the resumption of aid to it, and that is not going to happen till the Taliban themselves honour promises about minority and women rights made to the international community ahead of the US departure from their country. Such things ought to be handled at the embassy level and do not really need aeroplanes full of ministers going from here to there to deliver messages. And most likely, it’s not as if these things have not been tried already. Pakistan’s efforts to mobilise the ummah didn’t quite work either, with nobody except Saudi Arabia committing any money at the OIC foreign minister’s special session in Islamabad on 19 December 2021. That only leaves the prospect of Islamabad itself committing more aid to Afghanistan.

Perhaps, while he’s there, the NSA will also ask Kabul what the tension at parts of the border is all about. Taliban soldiers have been regularly tearing down the border fence that was erected on the Pakistani side after a lot of sacrifices and threatening and even firing at Pakistani soldiers trying to put it back together again. The last thing anybody needs is for Taliban foot soldiers to vent their personal grievances about the age-old Durand Line in this manner and their commanders, themselves non-believers in the border, not checking them; that too at this sensitive time.

The least that can be expected from the NSA’s visit, then, is more clarity about the nature of the relationship and exchanges between Islamabad and Kabul. *