Today, the Director-General of ISI Lt Gen Faiz Hameed reached Kabul seemingly to assist in Taliban government formation after sorting out internal differences between the Mullah Yaqoob and Kabulites led Kandaharis under Sirajuddin Haqqani.
The US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was asked this week whether the Taliban was the enemy, the Joe Biden’s assistant said, “It was hard to put on a label on it, partly because we (US) are yet to see what they will be now that they are in complete control of Afghanistan.”
Under the 1267 UNSC committee including the projected president of the Emirates, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and more than 120 of its top leaders are listed as global terrorists. The democratic world is dealing with a strange situation in the Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan where the ruling Taliban is neither a UN nor a US-designated terrorist entity. All global terror entities under the UN 1267 committee and US State Department, the al Qaeda, Haqqani Network, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), and Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, have sworn allegiance (bayat) to the Taliban and its supreme leader Mullah Hibatullah Akundzada. When engaging the Taliban without breaking its policy of not negotiating with terrorists and terror organizations the democratic world is playing with semantics. By throwing the moral principles book out of the window, countries like China and the United Kingdom have sought the support of the mentor of Pakistan to engage the Taliban.
The Pakistani super spy Lt Gen Faiz Hameed, DG, ISI, reached Kabul today, as the Taliban holding the announcement of the new Afghan government. According to Kabul watchers, Gen Hameed will help the Taliban leadership to shed their differences and announce the government soon. Last July in China It was Rawalpindi, which had facilitated the meeting of Mullah Baradar and Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
This year the real gainer of the military is China, a true practitioner of real Politics as it engages junta in Myanmar and Taliban in Afghanistan. On the other hand, the democratic world is still hoping that the Sunni Islamist group will give them an inclusive government window to legitimize.
As India has its pro-China regimes on the eastern and western borders, this poses a real threat to the country. As the Taliban affiliate groups trying to create internal trouble in Kashmir and the hinterland, India is faced with the Chinese increasing its already large footprint to Afghanistan and Central Asia through its friends in Russia and Iran.
By openly seeking economic ties with China rather than question them on the treatment of Sunni Uighurs in Xinjiang the Taliban has actually thrown the western calculations in the trash bin. On August 31, the Al Qaeda statement talked about liberating so-called Islamic lands all over the world including Palestine, Maghreb, Syria, and Kashmir but did not utter a word about the Xinjiang Uighurs. So the theory that Taliban 2.0 would turn against China due to unpleasant force in Xinjiang is stillborn.
It is quite visible that China will extend its Belt Road Initiative to Afghanistan and exploit its Lithium and Copper resources in return for infrastructure development by liking it to CPEC. This will allow China to not only move out Afghan minerals from Gwadar port in Balochistan but also through the Karakoram Highway. It will also have a close look at the left US military equipment including Black Hawk helicopters, IED proof all-terrain vehicles, tactical drones, area weapons, and body armor for reverse engineering.
Pakistani deep state will be used by China as a trump card in its engagement with the Taliban as the entire leadership of the Sunni Pashtun Islamists including Mullah Akhundzada, Mullah Yaqoob, and Sirajuddin Haqqani has been nurtured and nourished by Rawalpindi. As described by UK Chief of Defence Staff Gen Nick CarterThe British, who brokered a peace deal with the US in favor of the Taliban boys, are playing the same Pakistan card.
