Honoring President Rabbani: Peace Is the Path to Ending Forced Migration from Afghanistan—and a Shared Regional Interest
Fifteen years after his assassination, Displaced International remembers President Burhanuddin Rabbani and calls for Afghan-owned, regionally supported, and United Nations-facilitated diplomacy to secure sustainable peace and address the conditions that force Afghans to flee.
On the fifteenth anniversary of his assassination, Displaced International honors the late President Burhanuddin Rabbani. We reflect on those elements of his public legacy that demonstrate the enduring importance of negotiation, power-sharing, restraint, peaceful political transition, and regional diplomacy—principles that remain central to the United Nations’ vision for Afghanistan under Security Council Resolution 2822 (2026).
“President Rabbani’s peace efforts remind us that legitimacy is sustained not by holding power at any cost, but by opening political space, accepting compromise, and protecting people from renewed conflict. Afghanistan needs an inclusive and rights-respecting government, supported—not undermined—by its neighbors. The region must treat peace in Afghanistan as a shared security interest. Afghan suffering cannot be normalized amid wider regional progress; left unresolved, instability, extremism, and displacement will continue to carry consequences across borders. The objective must be the one affirmed by the United Nations Security Council: an Afghanistan at peace with itself and its neighbors,” said Ambassador M. Ashraf Haidari, Founder and President of Displaced International.
President Rabbani assumed the presidency in 1992 under the negotiated succession framework of the Peshawar Accord. In 1993, he accepted the Islamabad Accord, which sought to halt factional warfare through a power-sharing arrangement with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar as prime minister. These agreements failed to end the conflict, and their limitations must be acknowledged. Yet they reflected attempts to manage political succession and share executive authority through negotiation—a principle later reinforced by Security Council Resolution 1378 (2001), which called for a broad-based and representative Afghan government committed to peace with its neighbors.
When the Taliban entered Kabul in September 1996, a United Nations report recorded that President Rabbani moved his cabinet north with the stated aim of avoiding further bloodshed in the capital. In December 2001, he transferred authority to the Afghan Interim Administration led by Hamid Karzai under the Bonn Agreement, endorsed by the Security Council through Resolution 1383 (2001). The late President subsequently chaired Afghanistan’s High Peace Council and ultimately lost his life while pursuing reconciliation.
President Rabbani’s peacemaking also extended beyond Afghanistan. During the 1995 Kabul round of inter-Tajik negotiations, the parties thanked him for helping arrange the talks and create a favorable environment for dialogue. His contribution formed part of the wider UN-facilitated process that culminated in Tajikistan’s 1997 General Agreement on Peace and National Accord, whose implementation was supported through Security Council Resolution 1128 (1997).
This history offers a sobering geopolitical lesson: national peacemaking cannot endure when external interests pull Afghan parties in competing directions or prioritize short-term leverage over a sustainable settlement. No country can secure its long-term interests by allowing instability to persist in Afghanistan. The commitments to sovereignty, noninterference, and regional cooperation endorsed by Security Council Resolution 1453 (2002), together with the coordinated engagement envisioned in Resolution 2721 (2023), should guide a renewed regional approach.
Today, exclusionary governance, severe restrictions on women and girls, the absence of representative institutions, terrorist threats, and continuing humanitarian and economic hardship obstruct sustainable peace and intensify displacement pressures. Displaced International calls on Afghanistan’s neighbors, regional organizations, the United Nations, and international partners to support an Afghan-owned political process leading to a legitimate, inclusive, representative, and accountable government. Such a process must protect the rights of all Afghans, include the full and meaningful participation of women and other representative voices, meet Afghanistan’s international counterterrorism obligations, and create conditions for displaced Afghans to return voluntarily, safely, and with dignity, consistent with Security Council Resolution 2822 (2026).
The most meaningful way to honor President Rabbani is to carry forward the unfinished work of peace. Regional progress cannot be sustainable while human suffering at the heart of the region is treated as permanent or acceptable. Consistent with General Assembly Resolution 79/317, sustainable peace, coordinated regional cooperation, and conditions for voluntary, safe, and dignified return are essential to a future in which Afghans are no longer forced to flee.
