RECENTLY, Afghanistan’s neighbours held con­­sultations in the Iranian capital on security and its impact on regional stability, under the Teh­ran Format. Special representatives on Afghanis­tan from Pakistan, China, Russia, Tajikistan, Uz­­b­ekis­tan, and Turkmenistan participated in the me­­eting. But the Afghan Taliban declined to attend.

The Tehran Format is not the only regional process which has been initiated for regional consensus building on Afghanistan’s security situation. Since 2014, 10 multilateral platforms have been introduced on various occasions by several regional and extra-regional countries to facilitate coordination and avoid regional and international confrontation on Afghanistan’s security affairs. The most notable among them is the Moscow Format, and keeping in view the Russia-Iran strategic partnership, the Tehran Format is an extended version of the Moscow process.

Pakistan has been an active member of almost all of these regional processes including the two aforementioned, the SCO Contact Group on Afghanistan, the Istanbul Process, the Extended ‘Troika’, etc. For Islamabad, participation in these regional forums has become a central pillar of its Afghan strategy. Pakistan’s decision to participate in regional dialogue forums on Afghanistan, particularly in the Tehran Format, is primarily based on three strategic objectives.

First, Islamabad considers itself the most important stakeholder in Afghanistan’s security and strategic affairs due to the depth, duration, and intensity of its exposure to Afghan instability. Apart from sharing a longest porous border with Afghanistan and hosting millions of Afghan refugees for decades, Pakistan has suffered the most in........

© Dawn