Afghanistan’s Neighbors Vow Not to Interfere in Its Affairs

Seeking to end an era of conflict, Afghanistan’s six neighbors promised Sunday to halt the meddling that has helped make this nation a battleground and basket case for more than 20 years.

Officials from Iran, Pakistan, China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan joined Afghan leaders in signing the nonintervention agreement, proclaiming that “Afghanistan should enjoy security, stability, prosperity, territorial integrity, democracy and human rights after so many years of conflict and deprivation.”

That may seem a simple enough premise, but Afghanistan’s neighbors have a long history of pursuing political and economic agendas here using armed factions as proxies. The new declaration in essence aims to bind the neighbors to a laissez-faire policy.

Afghanistan’s armed resistance to the 1979-89 Soviet occupation and the ensuing civil wars in the 1990s were all, to some extent, fought by factions financed by outside interests, including the United States. The new Afghan government sees the accord as an important step in the long-term process of establishing its legitimacy while disarming the regional militias that control most of the country outside the capital.

Timed to coincide with Sunday’s one-year anniversary of Hamid Karzai’s swearing-in as leader of the transitional government, the so-called Kabul Declaration was pushed by the United Nations and the Group of 8 industrialized nations as a way of bolstering Afghanistan’s territorial and political integrity.

But even as the accord was being signed, a wave of violence that has shaken Afghanistan in recent days continued. A remote-controlled bomb apparently exploded near a car carrying three Afghan soldiers in the southern city of Kandahar. One was killed and the others were wounded. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

The declaration, signed by the foreign ministers of four of the neighboring nations and the ambassadors of three others, is another step out of the shadows for a country that just 15 months ago, under the Taliban regime, was a global pariah. It then had diplomatic relations with only one country, Pakistan.

“A secure, peaceful, friendly Afghanistan is a key to our collective success,” Karzai said. “We need to strengthen our bonds of brotherhood and friendship and work for a region that is free of terror, extremism and backwardness.”

Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah, who goes by one name, said at a news conference after the signing, “The agreement is representative of a new phase of relations Afghanistan has entered with all neighbors.”

In the view of many Afghans, the neighbor most culpable of meddling is Pakistan, which supported the Taliban. Responding to a reporter’s question of whether it will now respect Afghan independence and beef up security along its border to check the movement of remnant Taliban forces into and out of Afghanistan, Pakistani Foreign Minister Mian Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri said his country is committed to nonintervention.

“We have deployed 60,000 to 70,000 troops along the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and that was at a time when we had tension on our border with [India].... That should be evidence to the international community of the level of our commitment to nonintervention,” he said.

The United Nations’ special envoy to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, said Sunday’s agreement will help “consolidate peace in Afghanistan and the region.”

“I hope we have entered a new phase, a new chapter in the history of the relations of Afghanistan with its neighbors,” Brahimi said.

Meanwhile, in Kabul, Brig. Gen. Werner Freers, commander of the German contingent of the 4,700-soldier international peacekeeping force patrolling the capital, said German air force forensic teams would soon begin investigating the cause of a helicopter crash that killed seven German soldiers Saturday.

Initial reports suggested that the crash was caused by mechanical failure, not an attack.

Officials in Kabul said Saturday that the crash also killed two youths on the ground; however, Freers and other peacekeeping force officials disputed that Sunday.

A spokesman for Germany’s Defense Ministry in Berlin said that “the two girls who were originally reported missing have returned to their parents,” although he added that the possibility remained that Afghan victims could be found under the wreckage.

The crash occurred in an industrial park where some vacant buildings have been turned into housing for refugees.

The crash took place the same day a U.S. soldier was fatally shot in eastern Afghanistan, apparently by remnant Taliban or Al Qaeda forces. The body of Sgt. Steven Checo was flown to a U.S. air base in Germany on Sunday en route to the United States.

A Mass was said for Checo on Sunday morning in Elizabeth, N.J., said the Rev. Ronald Newland of St. Mary’s of the Assumption Roman Catholic Church, where the family attends services.