Sunday Times 2
Sri Lanka and Afghanistan: A growing partnership
From left: Minister M.H.A. Haleem, Speaker Karu Jayasuriya, Afghan Ambassador M. Ashraf Haidari and Minister Daya Gamage at the Afghanistan National Day ceremony
Afghanistan pursues a foreign policy agenda that promotes cooperation against confrontation, win-win policy initiatives against lose-lose militarism and posturing in the immediate neighbourhood, the wider region, and the world at large.
This constructive thinking underpins Afghanistan’s fast-growing ties with Sri Lanka, with which the country shares an ancient civilisation. The statues of Buddha in the central province of Bamiyan speak to the rich pre-Islamic Buddhist heritage of Afghanistan, which Afghans have striven to preserve and protect.
In March 2001, Afghans at home and abroad were devastated when the Taliban on orders from outside dynamited into pieces the treasured Buddhas of Bamiyan, a UNESCO world heritage site. Those same Buddhas had stood tall, revered, and protected in the preceding centuries when various Afghan empires espoused and championed Islam as a faith of peace, coexistence, and tolerance.
In the same vein when a misguided extremist minority attacked innocent Sri Lankans on April 21, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani was among the first world leaders to condemn in the strongest terms the same terrorism and extremism, which had victimised and targeted innocent Muslims in Afghanistan and the rest of the world. When some acts of communal violence broke out in parts of Sri Lanka, in retaliation and response to the Easter attacks, I drew on Afghanistan’s own experience as a multiethnic and pluralistic society to call on Sri Lanka’s leaders to embrace their nation’s powerful diversity underpinned by the principle of “do no harm.” I knew that doing so would help Sri Lanka deny extremists at home and abroad the opportunity to exploit any alienation, which divisive communalism can cause, that could further radicalise youth and use them as instruments of terror.
The government of Afghanistan has commended the able leadership of President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe on taking effective security measures to have swiftly stabilised the situation following the Easter attacks. Thanks to their efforts, Sri Lanka’s tourism industry has quickly begun recovering, as has the country’s overall economy.
It is noteworthy that under a stable political environment, millions of registered Sri Lankan voters will go to the polls on November 16, 2019, to elect their next leader. Despite occasional challenges, Sri Lanka’s democracy has demonstrated itself to be vibrant and resilient, inspiring younger democracies such as Afghanistan.
As two democracies, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka share many development needs and challenges. This underpins our growing ties, which enjoy the support of leadership in both countries. I am grateful to the speaker of the Sri Lankan parliament, Karu Jayasuriya, for his continued support of expanding Afghanistan-Sri Lanka relations.
Last March, the speaker helped form and launch with me the Sri Lanka-Afghanistan Parliamentary Friendship Association, further strengthening bilateral ties between the two nations. This growth was initiated under former President Rajapaksa in 2013 when Afghanistan opened an embassy in Colombo. Sri Lanka reciprocated by opening an embassy in Kabul the following year.
I am equally grateful to the former president for his deep interest in elevating Afghanistan-Sri Lankan bilateral ties and further enhancing the two countries’ cooperation within the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and other intergovernmental organisations where we have advanced shared interests, including regional stability, environmental security, as well as connectivity for trade and stronger people-to-people ties across South Asia.
Since 2013, many senior official and technical delegations from Afghanistan have visited Sri Lanka. This includes the state visit of former President Hamid Karzai to Sri Lanka in 2014, while the two governments have signed eight agreements and MOUs.
In the coming months, I look forward to initiating bilateral security and defence cooperation, knowing from the shared experiences of Afghanistan and Sri Lanka that most security threats transcend borders and are no longer limited to just landlocked or littoral states separately. It would be beneficial to both countries to explore maritime security cooperation opportunities in the areas of counterterrorism, counternarcotics, and counter-human trafficking. In addition, Afghanistan will seek to learn from Sri Lanka’s successful war-to-peace transition experience, including from the country’s reintegration and reconciliation initiatives and programmes that have delivered tangible results.
In the political and economic arenas, both sides look forward to signing MOUs on regular political consultations and on trade and investment promotion and protection. The latter together with the air services agreement should facilitate the establishment of a direct passenger and cargo flight between Kabul and Colombo. When this happens, Afghans and Sri Lankans should be able to reconnect with their shared heritage through tourism, trade and investment, education, and cultural exchange.
(M. Ashraf Haidari is the Ambassador of Afghanistan to Sri Lanka and a Senior Fellow at the Institute of National Security Studies of Sri Lanka).