Priorities
Priority 4. Enhance border security, with facilitation of bilateral dialogue between Afghan and Pakistani authorities.
Advancing the security and development of Kandahar will depend in large measure on improving security and development along the province’s border with Pakistan. Ultimately, a more effective management of the border will not be possible without closer relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan. To that end, Canada is undertaking several initiatives to facilitate those closer relations.
Canadian Objective for 2011:
- By 2011, we expect that Afghan institutions, in cooperation with Pakistan, will exercise stronger capacity to manage the border and foster economic development in the border area.
The troubled relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan has been fully evident in recent months. Flows of insurgents and munitions from Pakistan into Afghanistan continued. At the same time, scheduled meetings between officials of the two countries, intended to build confidence and cooperation, were suspended. Leaders of both governments have since engaged bilaterally, and both governments have agreed to resume bilateral discussions and take part in Afghanistan-Pakistan-ISAF meetings. Even so, long-standing sources of those bilateral strains—disagreement over the Afghanistan-Pakistan boundary line, the presence of terrorist safe havens inside Pakistan, the continuing presence of some two million Afghan refugees in Pakistan—remain unresolved.
Nonetheless, some progress on this priority was achieved. G8 governments recommitted their support for development and security along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and pledged to coordinate programs for border-region development. For our part, Canada has signed an agreement with the Afghan government to provide start-up funding for the Afghan Peace Jirga Secretariat, an organization that will, among other things, facilitate meetings of Afghan tribal leaders living along the border.
Canada is also facilitating a series of workshops bringing together senior border officials of both countries on issues of customs, migration, narcotics control and other mutual concerns. One early and practical result: harmonization of working hours at Afghan and Pakistani border posts. For the first time, border stations on both sides are open seven days a week, which allows easier border crossings for legal commerce, rising customs revenues for both governments, and a new opening for a stronger shared sense of confidence between the two countries.
Building that confidence is a necessary part of the complex process of promoting practical cooperation between Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is also true that the border is long, the terrain harsh and infrastructure scarce. So setting Canada’s benchmarks in this priority is taking time. One benchmark, for instance, will target training of border officials and address the installation of new infrastructure. In the meantime, we are working with Afghans and Pakistanis to assess real needs and realistic opportunities for better border management.
