The formal two-day visit of Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev to Pakistan on the invitation of Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif, has marked a significant development in the ongoing multileveled cooperative bilateral relations between Baku and Islamabad. The two-day visit, July 11-12, 2024, contains substantial significance for the two-sided governments due to the changing geo-strategic landscape of the international system, where the geo-economic interests of the states have become overwhelming forces.
The two-day visit led the leaders of both states to conclude a $2 billion investment deal in diverse areas.
By hosting Azerbaijan’s President, the formal state authorities of Pakistan showed their strong ambitions for upholding the broader agenda of high-level discussion covering several vital areas of bilateral collaboration. This state-level meeting emphasizes the significance of multifaceted cooperation between two key players of the Muslim world. Moreover, the governments of these two Muslim states share a common vision in strategic, political, economic, and social domains. The main purpose of this short visit is to increase the diplomatic engagement of two states located in different regions.
Despite territorial disconnects, both nations have substantial potential for supporting their shared economic plans in different regions. In this way, the initial meeting of the visit led the leaders of both states to conclude a $ 2 billion investment deal in diverse areas. This business deal instructed the state authorities of both states to develop various investment plans of shared trading values while upholding and supporting each other’s economic vision at the regional and international levels.
To endorse the vision of mutual engagement covering wide-ranging areas of economic collaboration, both nations signed fifteen different agreements and Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) in diverse domains during this visit. It aimed to untapped each other’s potential in highly valuable economic sectors. For the promotion of people-to-people contacts, the areas of cultural exchange, information technology, tourism, and literature and science remained prominent in the list of signed agreements and MoUs. The two-sided governments fundamentally introduce these agreements and MoUs to flourish their existing bilateral trading connections, parallel to exploring new avenues for future cooperation.
Fifteen different agreements and Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) were signed, covering economic collaboration, cultural exchange, information technology, tourism, literature, and science.
During the formal interaction of two-sided mainstream political authorities during this visit, the statements of Azerbaijani and Pakistani state authorities acknowledged the ongoing multileveled cooperation between Baku and Islamabad, which was parallel to defining the future of their cooperation. The initial round of two-day meetings showed the commitments of two-sided governments to appreciating and benefiting from each other’s potential of billions of dollars for future cooperation. Apart from witnessing landmark progress in the economic domain, the participating leadership also appreciated the political coordination between Baku and Islamabad during this meeting.
The genesis of political coordination can be traced in the history of Pakistan-Azerbaijan bilateral relations, a relationship that has weathered many challenges and grown stronger over time. Pakistan suffers from the Kashmir issue in the South Asian region and always tried to cultivate the widespread support of the international community against brutal Indian force deployments in certain areas of Kashmir. Akin to Pakistan, Azerbaijan has passed through similar circumstances on the former Karabakh issue.
In this way, the leaders of both nations realized each other’s suffering in their respective regions and adopted supportive policies on Kashmir and Karabakh issues. The increasing political coordination on the disputed territorial issues directed the strategic communities from Baku and Islamabad towards upgrading their bilateral collaboration in security and defence.
The expansion of cooperation in this domain resulted in the trilateral military exercise, Three Brothers-2021, among the formal conventional defence forces of Pakistan, Azerbaijan, and Turkey. This military drill aimed to ensure the high growth of military cooperation parallel to improving the conventional war-fighting capabilities of their regular armed forces, which ultimately supports the broader framework of trilateral strategic partnership.
The formation of a strategic connection between three key players of the Muslim world, Azerbaijan (the resources-rich country), Turkey (a nation with advanced ideological values), and Pakistan (the only Muslim nuclear power), inflicted a sense of confidence in Baku’s strategic calculation and led Azerbaijan to secure an appreciable victory in its territorial clash with Armenia. In this way, the Karabakh and Kashmir issues were the prime forces for generating multi-layered cooperative bonds between the two states.
The trilateral military exercise, Three Brothers-2021, among Pakistan, Azerbaijan, and Turkey, aimed to enhance military cooperation and conventional war-fighting capabilities.
The resolution of the Karabakh issue now demands the Azerbaijani authorities to extend their support of Pakistan on the Kashmir issue beyond conventional fixed frameworks of Pakistan-Azerbaijan bilateral cooperation. The Azerbaijani government is required to uphold the peaceful resolution of the Kashmir issue in its bilateral and multilateral dealings with New Delhi while highlighting the massive human rights abuses of the Muslim community living in occupied areas of Kashmir. It is pertinent to mention here that the Indian human rights violations of the Kashmiri Muslim population have been officially confirmed in the two reports of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2018 and 2019.
Further cooperative scenarios between Baku and Islamabad could be augmented by emphasizing the common problems of Islamic countries and the sufferings of the Muslim population living under specific occupational forces. The increasing focus on the Muslim world will enable two-sided leadership to empower their standings in the Islamic countries, parallel to cultivating massive diplomatic support of Muslim leaders in their respective regional politics. In addition to strategic considerations, the societal dimension of Pakistan-Azerbaijan ties must be recognized, as people-to-people contacts between both nations have flourished in the past few years.
Baku’s promotion as an appropriate and new tourist place in Pakistan witnessed a dramatic rise in tourism in Azerbaijan due to its rich cultural heritage, diverse landscapes, and fascinating historical places. Therefore, a high rate of Pakistani visitors has been recorded in Baku with the support of easy visa facilities in Azerbaijan for Pakistani citizens. The inclusion of Pakistan in the list of Azerbaijani e-visa services has already rationalized the countrywide spread of visa facilities to Pakistani travellers. This facility supported both states’ shared economic vision by increasing the avenues of foreign direct investment between the two nations.
Furthermore, the recent initiation of direct flights between Baku and Azerbaijan has become an admirable feature, increasing interconnectedness between two-sided business and tourist communities. Direct air connectivity started attracting more investments in various areas analogous to advancing cultural exchanges because direct flights generally fostered cooperative connections between states.
The only challenge in the social domain is language, which hinders the greater support of growing cultural collaboration between Baku and Islamabad. The language barrier hampers progress in several important sectors, such as diplomacy, investment, education, and tourism.
The language challenge could be addressed productively by introducing various language training programs, improving professional language proficiency, and translating services to the business and tourist communities.
The creation of bilingual resource centres and the societal-level promotion of these resource centres in both states could empower the governments of both states to widen the scope of business and investment in their bilateral economic ties. Thus, the improved societal communication capabilities would help two-sided governments enhance and maintain collaborative solid connections between their respective business communities while empowering the broader scope of cultural exchanges between Baku and Islamabad.
Therefore, the present visit of Ilham Aliyev to Pakistan could be pivotal to empowering the ongoing matrix of Pakistan-Azerbaijan ties, which communicates ideological solid connections, healthy economic collaboration, diverse social interaction, and active strategic cooperation to the entire international community. This visit would augment the bilateral collaboration areas and contribute to the scope of regional stability and prosperity based on the shared values of mutual interest and common goals.
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The author is an Assistant Professor, at the Department of International Relations, National University of Modern Languages (NUML), Islamabad.