There are still a number of 'ifs' and 'buts' to the peace agreement signed by the US and Afghan Taliban on Saturday last (February 29, 2020). It would certainly take a lot of doing for the 40-year long bloodbath to turn into permanent peace giving rise ultimately to an all-inclusive nation at peace with itself, at last.

While trying to cooperate in the peace process, Pakistan must take extra-care not to seem in any way interfering on the side of one or the other Afghan party to the conflict.

Pakistan can meet this challenge by focusing single-mindedly on rebuilding and strengthening transit and bilateral trade as well as economic links with the land-locked Afghanistan. To start with, we could invite Washington to revive its proposal to set up the Reconstruction Opportunity Zones (ROZs) straddling the Pak-Afghan border. The US had floated the idea of building ROZs in early 2002 to ensure jobs for the people of border areas. In an interview published sometimes last year, PM's Adviser on Commerce Abdul Razak Dawood had said: "From those facilities, products will be manufactured and exported to the US market on zero duty."

ROZs along the Pakistan and Afghanistan borders with capital and technology coming from the US and, location and manpower from Pakistan and Afghanistan for producing high-tech engineering goods for the US market (at zero rate), would offer immense mutual economic benefits for all the three participating countries.

Next, the US could help Pakistan turn the corridor it has been using since November 2001 to transport weapons, men and materials from Karachi Port to Afghanistan into a permanent, well secured corridor to enable Afghanistan to conduct its transit trade without being adversely affected by unnecessary glitches. The Kabul government, on its part, would need to ensure that the goods imported by Afghanistan are essentially for consumption within Afghanistan.

With the passage of time and increase in the mutual political confidence between the two countries a free trade zone (FTZ) can be established along the borders where there had existed all these years a free-terror zone. For making a success of this FTZ, experts from the two countries should join hands to study from close quarters the FTZs being operated successfully along the borders of other countries, so as to implement the scheme without any hassle.

And one hopes conditions would soon be conducive enough for taking in hand the construction of Afghanistan part of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline. Of the 1,814-kilometer gas pipeline at least 816 kilometers will pass through the Afghan territory (Herat, Farah, Nimroz, Helmand and Kandahar provinces) and enter into Pakistan via Quetta and Multan. The work on the Turkmenistan section of the project was completed in February 2018.

Afghanistan is expected to earn more than $400 million in transit duties annually from the project. The project will also create thousands of job opportunities for Afghans. Also, Afghanistan will annually get 500 million cubic meters of gas from the project in the first ten years. The amount will increase to one billion cubic meters of gas in the following ten years and 1.5 billion cubic meters of gas in the third 10 years after the completion of the project.

The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan 500 kilovolts Line (TAP-500) will transfer Turkmenistan's electricity to Pakistan through Afghanistan. Afghanistan is expected to earn $110 million annually from the TAP project. An optic fiber will also connect regional and neighboring countries under the TAPI project. Another major part of the project is the national and regional railway which would connect Pakistan and Turkmenistan through Afghanistan. In view of the pledge extended by the US in the just signed peace accord one expects the US to fund the TAPI and TAP projects to help the war-torn country to return to economic normalcy at the earliest. In the process, these projects would also help Pakistan, an energy deficit country, to meet to an extent its escalating energy needs.

Meanwhile, Pakistan needs to invoke the open access clause in the agreement under CASA- 1000 project paving way for two- way trade of electricity, as under the existing deal, Pakistan is bound to import 1,000MW electricity per day at 9.50 cents per unit in summer season from May to October once this project comes on stream. Under the new scenario, with Pakistan having become surplus in electricity it wants to export it to the Kyrgyz republic, Tajikistan and Afghanistan in winter season by using the same structure of CASA project.

Most of Afghanistan is said to be currently experiencing a 60 per cent drop in the rain and snowfall needed for food production. The rapid expansion of Kabul's population, extreme drought conditions across the country and the specter of climate change is also said to have exacerbated the need for new water infrastructure.

A 2017 study by Afghan, German, and Finnish universities stresses that Afghanistan desperately needs better water infrastructure and water management.

One would hope the US to take a keener interest in restarting work on the Shahtoot Dam which will hold 146 million cubic meters of potable water for two million Kabul residents and irrigate 4,000 hectares of land. It will also provide drinking water for a new city on the outskirts of Kabul called Deh Sabz.

But building dams on the Kabul River is said to be a politically complicated matter; the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region is said to be defined by its complex maze of trans-boundary rivers and there is no legal framework in place to avoid major conflict between the nations. And the development is said to be fueling fears downstream in Pakistan that the Shahtoot Dam which is being funded and built by India will alter the flow of the Kabul River and reduce the water flows into Pakistan that could severely limit the country's future access to water. The Pakistani media has already reported that there could be a 16 to 17 per cent drop in water flow after the completion of the Shahtoot Dam and other planned dams. According to the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations' 2011 report on water security in Central Asia, "Providing the right support by India (while constructing the Shahtoot dam) can have a tremendous stabilizing influence, but providing the wrong support can spell disaster by agitating neighboring countries."

A water-sharing treaty between Pakistan and Afghanistan could, it is believed, potentially help promote the irrigation techniques used and determine the types of hydroelectric projects that can be built along the Kabul River basin.

Afghanistan and Pakistan must, therefore, urgently start paying attention to regional hydro-diplomacy. The first step is to support the gathering of data, which would be shared with all neighbors, and potential scientific forecasts of the planned dams' impacts on water flow. Scientists need to be involved with international diplomatic and scientific support.

With peace returning to Afghanistan and its economy getting into gear, the right conditions would certainly be created for the nearly three million Afghan refugees still standard in Pakistan to return home in dignity and with honor. Their extended stay, especially in Balochistan and KPK, has caused demographic tensions in these provinces. While they are awaiting repatriation, the Afghan government could issue them the necessary passports and Pakistan can stamp on these passports the necessary category of visa including that of business, work, medical and student visa, etc.

To and fro movement of manpower in thousands across the border occurs every day between the two countries. Therefore, trouble-free arrangements for facilitating this movement need to be established at border check-posts on both sides at the earliest.

Both China and Russia are also likely to take keen interest in the reconstruction and rehabilitation of Afghanistan after permanent peace returns to the war-ravaged country. Pakistan could also join in wherever needed in the efforts by these countries to help Afghanistan regain its economic potential.