By Shahnoor Saqib — SCN News
NEW YORK, Sept. 26 — Pakistan told its regional partners on Saturday that ambitious plans to connect Central Asia with the Arabian Sea cannot deliver their economic promise while militant groups continue to operate from Afghanistan, linking Islamabad’s increasingly tense security dispute with Kabul directly to the future of trade, railways and investment across the Economic Cooperation Organisation region.
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, chairing the 27th informal meeting of the ECO Council of Ministers on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, said Pakistan still wanted a peaceful, prosperous and stable Afghanistan integrated into the wider region. But he said Islamabad now expected concrete and verifiable action by the Taliban authorities against the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, Balochistan Liberation Army and other groups that Pakistan says threaten its territory and citizens.
The message gave Saturday’s meeting a sharper security dimension than a conventional gathering focused on trade and connectivity. Pakistan is chairing the ECO Council of Ministers for 2026-27 and wants to use that role to accelerate regional commerce, transport corridors and a digitally enabled free-trade area. Afghanistan, however, sits geographically at the centre of some of the most important routes connecting Pakistan’s ports with Central Asia.
Dar effectively argued that those two agendas — security and economic integration — can no longer be treated separately.
Pakistan has offered Afghanistan trade concessions and has backed a feasibility framework for the proposed Uzbekistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan railway, a project that could give landlocked Central Asian economies a shorter route toward Pakistani ports. Islamabad says such connectivity could transform Afghanistan from a source of regional instability into a transit bridge between Central and South Asia.
But deteriorating Pakistan-Afghanistan relations have increasingly put that vision in doubt.
Islamabad says militants based across its western border have been responsible for attacks inside Pakistan and has repeatedly demanded action from the Taliban authorities. Kabul has disputed Pakistani accusations that Afghan territory is being permitted to serve as a base for attacks and tensions have periodically spilled into border closures and restrictions affecting trade and transit.
Pakistan’s Foreign Office said earlier this month that Islamabad remained prepared to reopen trade, transit and connectivity channels if its terrorism concerns were addressed. It said Pakistan had pursued direct talks as well as mediation involving China, Qatar and Türkiye, but had yet to receive the assurances it wanted from the Afghan side.
Dar brought that unresolved dispute before a grouping whose economic ambitions depend heavily on stable transit through the region.
“Pakistan’s only expectation from the Taliban regime is to address our legitimate security concerns,” Dar told the meeting, calling for verifiable action against TTP, BLA and affiliated groups. He said regional peace and development depended on eliminating the terrorist threat Pakistan says is emanating from Afghanistan.
The setting was significant. ECO brings together Pakistan, Türkiye, Iran, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, creating a regional bloc stretching from South Asia and the Gulf approaches through Central Asia to the Caucasus and Türkiye.
Together, its members have a population approaching half a billion people, yet Dar said they account for only around 2.2% of global trade, while commerce among ECO members represents roughly 8% of their total trade. For Pakistan, those figures demonstrate the gap between the region’s geographic potential and its economic integration.
Pakistan wants its chairmanship to narrow that gap.
Dar outlined an agenda centred on increasing intra-regional trade, improving transport and transit corridors, developing a digitally supported ECO Free Trade Area and strengthening cooperation on climate resilience. Islamabad’s broader objective is to connect Central Asian economies more efficiently with Pakistan’s Arabian Sea ports while creating a larger regional market across ECO states.
That strategy gives Afghanistan an importance far beyond Pakistan’s bilateral security dispute with Kabul.
A stable Afghanistan could provide some of the shortest overland connections between Central Asian states and Pakistan. Continued militancy, border tensions and disrupted transit, by contrast, can undermine the commercial logic of railway, road and energy projects before they are fully developed.
Dar’s remarks therefore amounted to a security condition attached to Pakistan’s connectivity vision: Islamabad remains willing to integrate Afghanistan economically, but it does not want regional trade expansion to proceed independently of action against militants.
That position reflects a harder line Pakistan has increasingly adopted after years of engagement with the Taliban authorities.
Islamabad initially sought to combine political dialogue with economic incentives. Dar himself travelled to Afghanistan previously, while Pakistan offered transit concessions and reduced tariffs. China has also attempted to bring Pakistan and Afghanistan together in trilateral discussions, and Qatar and Türkiye have participated in diplomatic efforts to ease tensions.
The Pakistani position now is that economic normalisation depends on measurable security results.
That does not mean Islamabad is advocating Afghanistan’s isolation. Dar specifically said Pakistan wanted Afghanistan integrated into the region and at peace with both itself and its neighbours. The distinction is central to the government’s current approach: Pakistan is arguing for Afghan economic integration, but only alongside guarantees that territory across the border will not be used by armed groups targeting Pakistan.
The issue also matters to other ECO members.
Central Asian governments have their own concerns about militant movements and instability emanating from Afghanistan, while Iran shares a long border with the country. Türkiye has maintained diplomatic engagement with Kabul, and Uzbekistan has been among the strongest advocates of infrastructure projects capable of turning Afghanistan into a regional transit corridor.
That creates a common economic interest in Afghan stability even where individual ECO members may differ over how to engage the Taliban authorities.
Dar’s message sought to connect those interests: counter-terrorism should not be viewed simply as Pakistan’s bilateral demand but as a prerequisite for unlocking the wider region’s economic potential.
The New York meeting was also taking place against a second security crisis much farther west.
Dar expressed concern over the continuing instability in the Middle East and reaffirmed Pakistan’s preference for negotiated settlements in accordance with international law. Islamabad has spent much of UNGA81 promoting diplomacy as conflicts involving Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and strategic shipping routes threaten to widen.
Pakistan has particular credibility invested in that effort after helping facilitate negotiations between the United States and Iran earlier this year.
The two sides reached the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding in June following Pakistani mediation, an agreement President Asif Ali Zardari described at the time as an important opportunity to end a conflict that had disrupted energy supplies, trade and regional economic stability.
That diplomatic track has since come under severe pressure. Iran has presented another proposal linked to reopening the Strait of Hormuz, while Washington and Tehran remain divided over sanctions, the U.S. naval blockade and the sequencing of concessions.
Dar’s ECO intervention placed those Middle Eastern tensions within the same broader argument he made about Afghanistan: economic integration cannot be insulated from unresolved security crises.
For ECO countries, the connection is particularly direct.
The organisation spans some of the world’s most important emerging trade and energy corridors. Instability around Afghanistan can obstruct east-west and north-south land routes, while conflict involving Iran and the Gulf can disrupt maritime access and energy markets. Pakistan, positioned between Central Asia, China, Iran and the Arabian Sea, is exposed to both.
Islamabad is therefore trying to make regional connectivity a central element of its foreign policy while simultaneously arguing that connectivity requires political stability.
Dar has described economic diplomacy as a core Pakistani foreign-policy priority, with investment, information technology, minerals, energy and manufacturing increasingly prominent in Islamabad’s international engagement. At the same time, he has repeatedly identified cross-border terrorism from Afghanistan as one of Pakistan’s principal security concerns.
Saturday’s ECO meeting brought those two strands together.
Pakistan’s agenda is not merely to increase trade inside the bloc. Islamabad wants transport corridors capable of giving Central Asian states access to Arabian Sea ports, a regional free-trade architecture supported by digital systems and greater integration among economies that currently trade relatively little with one another.
The proposed Uzbekistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan railway illustrates both the opportunity and the obstacle.
If realised, the railway could connect Central Asia through Afghanistan to Pakistan’s transport network and ports, potentially reducing transit distances and creating new commercial routes. But the project necessarily depends on security and political stability across Afghanistan.
The same problem applies to highways, energy infrastructure and cross-border investment.
For Pakistan, that makes its dispute with Kabul an economic question as much as a counter-terrorism issue.
The next important stage will come in Islamabad in November, when Pakistan hosts the 30th ECO Council of Ministers meeting. Preparations are already under way, and the government wants the gathering to advance practical regional projects rather than produce another round of declarations about integration.
By then, Pakistan will be looking for evidence of whether diplomacy with Afghanistan has produced movement on its security demands and whether ECO governments can translate their broad support for connectivity into specific trade and infrastructure commitments.
The larger challenge is structural.
ECO possesses considerable geographic reach, large energy resources, major ports and a population of nearly 500 million, but its internal trade remains limited. Political disputes, sanctions, inadequate infrastructure, border restrictions and security problems have repeatedly prevented the organisation from developing the economic integration envisioned by its members.
Pakistan’s 2026-27 chairmanship is attempting to make that gap the centre of the organisation’s agenda.
But Dar’s message in New York made clear that Islamabad believes the economic project starts with security.