By: Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer

“An inclusive and broad-based political structure with the participation of all ethno-political groups is the only solution to Afghanistan’s issues.”
This was gist of the joint statement issued yesterday in Tehran at the end of the meeting of foreign ministers of the five countries that not only shared borders with Afghanistan but also have religious, ethnic, cultural, lingual, and historical commonalities with the Afghan Muslim people.
Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, along with the foreign ministers of China and Russia who joined them through video conference expressed “support for the national sovereignty, political independence, unity, and territorial integrity of Afghanistan, and non-interference in the internal affairs” of Afghanistan.
Although the Taliban militia which recently seized power in Kabul did not send any official representative to the one-day conference in the Iranian capital, the message of the gathering was heard all over Afghanistan, which is still trapped in instability, uncertainty, terrorism, and absence of a broad-based government, as a result of twenty years of plunder and destruction by its American occupiers.
It is hoped that the goodwill and sincere intentions of Afghanistan’s brotherly neighbours will be heeded and a truly Islamic, sovereign, and independent state, representing all the ethnic, religious, and political sectors of the country, will emerge from over four decades of mess created first by the Soviet occupation and then by American occupation – with factional terrorism playing havoc in between.
Afghanistan cannot be governed by any faction, however, militarily strong, in view of the fact that the Taliban represent only a fraction of the 40 percent Pashto-speakers of the country.
It means that even if all the Pashto-speakers were to join together by putting aside their ideological differences with the Taliban, Afghanistan, where the Persian-speaking Tajiks number 30 percent, and the Persian-speaking Hazara Shi’a Muslims number 15 percent, in addition to the Uzbek, Turkmen, Aymaq, and Baloch minorities, cannot be turned into “Pakhtunistan”.
Then there is the grave issue of rampant terrorism, especially by the macabrely murderous takfiri outfit “Daesh”, which is an American-Israeli creation to sow seeds of sedition amongst Muslims by fanning the fires of sectarian hatred.
It needs to be weeded out immediately from Afghanistan before it further destabilizes the country or spreads its tentacles across the borders into neighbouring states, along with the menace posed by poppy cultivators and drug smugglers.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in his speech at the conference said Tehran has relayed its “security concerns” to the Taliban by pointing out to the militia’s promise to strive towards ensuring the safety and security of both the Afghan people and the borders of Afghanistan’s neighbours.
He offered to provide the Afghan side with the security consultations [that are required] for the fight against Daesh” in view of the Islamic Republic’s experience in this regard.
Iran’s topmost diplomat also warned outside powers against interference in the affairs of the Afghan people, taking note of the pain and sufferings inflicted upon them by the United States for the past two decades.
If there is a real independent and impartial court of justice in our world, the US ought to be put in the criminal dock and made to pay for its terrorism against humanity, whether in Afghanistan or any other country.