October 22, 2019
Pakistan and Afghanistan have a symbiotic relationship. So, politics and polemics apart, the two countries, as President Karzai used to call it, are like Siamese twins and cannot be separated. That is true because Afghanistan is the only country in Pakistan’s neighborhood where 60000-70000 Afghans straddle Pakistani border without documents. This facility is not available to Afghans anywhere in their neighborhood whether it is Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan or China.
And similarly, Pakistan has not given this facility to any other neighbor, whether it is Iran, China, or India. So, again when I talk about symbiotic relationship, this is very much there.
Former Ambassador Asif Durrani at CRSS-ASC Quadrilateral Dialogue on September 30, 2019.
© Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS) and Afghan Studies Center (ASC), Islamabad.
