Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is meeting with regional leaders in Uzbekistan at a time when the security situation in his country is deteriorating. There are widespread fears about the possibility of Afghan refugees.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), millions of people have been displaced by the war for several years, including 270,000 in fighting since January, when US-led foreign forces are in the final stages of the war. complete withdrawal from Afghanistan.
As Taliban militants express their desire to defeat the Ghani-backed Western government, neighboring Afghanistan is on the alert for refugees crossing the border, with fighting intensifying and deteriorating living conditions. A diplomat quoted by Reuters news agency Britain said the two-day summit in Tashkent would focus on the future of Afghanistan and involve diplomatic negotiations.
The fate of Afghanistan and the prosperity of diplomacy are important agendas.
One of the delegates to the summit, Sirojiddin Muhriddin, is Tajikistan's Foreign Minister. "The member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) support the efforts of the Afghan government and people to restore peace, national economic development, counter-terrorism, extremism, and drug trafficking."
The decades-long war has forced Afghan citizens to flee their country and many of them have invaded neighboring Pakistan in eastern and western Iran.
Pakistan and Iran have the highest number of refugees.
Pakistan, for example, has been home to 1.4 million refugees, while Iran is holding about one million according to UN refugee agency data from this year. But the number of unregistered Afghans in both countries is much higher.
In another development, the leader of Afghanistan's mediation team, Nader Nadery, said the Taliban had pledged to lay down the gun for three months in an agreement to release 7,000 prisoners, militants held by the Afghan government. The statement comes as militants of the group continue to carry out intense attacks accompanied by control of many areas.
The announcement, made by Afghan soldiers using tear gas to disperse the nation's people who want to cross the border into Pakistan, says the Taliban wants its leaders removed from the UN's worst list.
