The eighth Moscow Format meeting on Afghanistan wrapped up on Monday without a joint statement, something that had not happened since the very first meeting of this forum, and that alone shows how deep the disagreement between Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban has become. For years Russia has managed to bring Afghanistan’s neighbours into one room and get them to sign off on a common text, so when even that small thing falls apart, it is hard to call it a minor diplomatic hiccup.
Russia’s envoy, Zamir Kabulov, was quite open about where the problem lay, saying the Pakistani and Taliban sides did not see eye to eye on the draft, and he added that Moscow found the Taliban’s position surprising because similar wording had already been accepted in last year’s statement.
Pakistan went to Moscow with a case it has been making for a long time, which is that the Taliban government is not a bystander watching militants operate from its soil but a regime that is complicit in the problem, and Islamabad defended its military operations inside Afghanistan as acts of self-defence. Any country whose soldiers and citizens keep being killed by groups sheltering across the border would say the same thing, and it is hard to see why Pakistan should soften its language just to make a communiqué look pleasant.The Taliban gave a very different account. Amir Khan Muttaqi said Kabul wants normal relations with every country in the region, Pakistan in particular, and that problems must be resolved through dialogue, while at the same time accusing Islamabad of using force and pressure. An offer of talks deserves to be heard, but Pakistan has listened to such offers for years while the attacks continued, and what it wants now is visible action against the groups involved rather than friendly words spoken in a conference hall.
The India factor made the picture even more awkward, because the Indian delegation sat at the same table and used the occasion to voice support for Afghanistan’s sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity, a line that sounds ordinary on paper but reads very differently in Islamabad. There, India’s growing warmth towards Kabul is watched closely, and the long-held view is that Indian influence in Afghanistan is used against Pakistan, something New Delhi denies. Whatever one makes of that argument, the contrast at Moscow was hard to miss, since Pakistan was talking about terrorism coming out of Afghanistan while India was talking about Afghan sovereignty, and a country under attack and a country building closer ties with the host of the attackers were never going to agree on one sentence.
Kabulov has said the Moscow Format can carry on without a statement, and perhaps it can, but a forum that cannot even name a shared threat will slowly lose its weight. Pakistan should therefore keep presenting its evidence in Moscow, Beijing, Tehran and the Central Asian capitals, since those countries also have reasons to worry about armed groups on Afghan soil, and it should keep the door to talks open so that Kabul’s offer of dialogue is tested rather than dismissed. At the same time, Pakistan cannot wait forever, because its people are paying the price every month.
The missing statement shows a region divided over what Afghanistan is and what the Taliban must do, and unless Kabul takes real steps against the groups that attack Pakistan, that division will stay, and no meeting in Moscow will be able to hide it.
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