India has offered Afghanistan a fresh $1 billion in economic assistance after Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Ashraf Ghani met in New Delhi today and discussed wide ranging issues of mutual and regional interest. 
India is the fifth largest bilateral donor in Afghanistan. It has been a key supporter of Kabul’s government and has poured more than $2 billion into the country since the Taliban was toppled in 2001.
Prime Minister assured his host of Delhi’s commitment to helping the war-torn country strengthen its education, health, agriculture and other sectors. In a joint statement the two leaders called for an end to sponsorship and support of militants. Pakistan was not identified   by name though.
“The two leaders discussed the regional situation and expressed grave concern at continued use of terrorism and violence in the region for achieving political objectives,” Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar said.
.“They called upon the concerned to put an end to all sponsorship, support, safe havens and sanctuaries to terrorists, including for those who target Afghanistan and India,” he told reporters.
Marking the visit, both countries exchanged several agreements on extradition, mutual legal assistance treaty, and peaceful uses of outer space.

Speaking at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) later in the evening, the Afghan leader, who is an anthropologist by training, reflected on the current global state of affairs. He termed terrorism as a medium term challenge. And called for a fundamental change in the regional and global response through improved information sharing and regional understanding, increased state level cooperation, and greater role of civil society and businesses.
The subject of his lecture was ‘Fifth Wave of Political Violence and Global Terrorism’.
Describing the ‘fifth wave’ as probably one of the “most well-financed movements in history” President Ashraf Ghani observed that “in the absence of rules of the game”, and due to the willingness of some states to sponsor non-state actors, the phenomena has evolved over the years with deepened and broadened techniques. The understanding of the current political violence has largely been reactive, due to which global actions have been sporadic and not sustained, he opined.
Networking is a striking feature of the fifth wave, the Afghan president said and added the terrorist networks that previously used to be face-to-face or in small groups have now become face-to-faceless, resulting in a distinct form of mobilisation.
Political violence is not owned by a specific culture, religion or geographic space, and requires careful analysis. Criminality and political violence have become organically related, Ghani said, pointing out “there is a distinctive form of violence that is inflicted on the citizens and that results in erosion of state authority”.
President Ghani noted that the terrorists target public spaces to disrupt the compact between the citizens and the State. “The objective is to induce fear in a systematic manner which effectively breaks the bond of trust between citizens and State.”