Flurry of Activities in New Delhi on Afghanistan New Government Carrying Imprint of ISI Pakistan
Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Sept 8: In a flurry of activities since the Taliban announced its “interim government” that clearly has the stamp of ISI of Pakistan, totally ignoring the concerns of the international community including India, talks are afoot between the security advisors of India, the United States and Russia over the developments in Afghanistan.
The Taliban on Tuesday night announced a 33-member cabinet under Mohammad Hasan Akhund as the prime minister and insisted that it was only an “interim government” till it could meet the concerns of the international community to form an “inclusive government.” The ISI chief was in Kabul for the last three days holding talks with the Taliban leaders over the formation of the new government which delayed its final selection forcing the Taliban postponed its final shape for at least three times in the last week.
Contrary to what the world leaders had been insisting that the new Taliban government should have representatives of women, religious minorities and other non-Taliban leaders, the “interim” government did not include any woman, 30 of the 33 belonged only to Pashtun community and several of the members of the cabinet are internationally acclaimed terrorists some of whom are still carrying rewards on their heads for arrests.
The only leader of the Taliban with whom India was in touch, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, who was being considered as one of the main contenders to be foreign minister, finally lost out in the race, negating any Indian influence in the cabinet formation. Stanekzai, who had engaged with many international interlocutors in Doha as the deputy head of the Taliban office, has been sidelined — deputy foreign minister is the same post that he had held in 1996 as well, before being moved as deputy health minister. Stanekzai had met the Indian ambassador in Qatar Deepak Mittal during which India had conveyed its concerns to the Taliban and in return was assured of a “close tie” between the two countries, but Stanekzai has been placed under Amir Khan Muttaqi as the foreign minister who is also on the UN terror list and is believed to be a strong anti-India. Muttaqi had served as the minister of information and culture during the first Taliban regime. He too is on the UN terror list, but had served as a Taliban representative in the United Nations-led talks during the earlier Taliban regime.
While a Russian security delegation is in Delhi to hold talks with the national security advisor Ajit Doval and others on Wednesday, a US delegation of intelligence and security officials, led by Chief of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) William Burns, is visiting the region including India and Pakistan, is reported to have met Doval on Tuesday and discussed the Afghanistan and other issue.
While the ministry of external affairs confirmed the visit of the Russian delegation led by its Secretary of the Security Council General Nikolay Patrushev, both the MEA and the US embassy in Delhi refused to confirm or deny the visit of Burns. The MEA spokesman said the Russian delegation would meet the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, NSA Doval and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, among other leaders.
The separate meetings with U.S. and Russian officials are significant given upcoming summits that Modi will attend the SCO and Quad formations where Russia and the U.S. play leading roles respectively, and both are expected to focus on the future course in Afghanistan.
While Modi will attend the SCO meeting on September 16 via videoconference, he is expected to travel in person to the United States for the Quad meeting slated for September 24. On Thursday, he will also host a virtual summit of BRICS countries, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, where Doval will make a presentation on security issues.
The visit of General Patrushev, the highest-ranking Russian security official who has been Security Council Secretary since 2008, and headed the Russian intelligence agency FSB earlier, follows a telephone conversation between PM Modi and President Putin on August 24 to discuss the developments in Afghanistan days after the Taliban claimed control of Kabul.
“The two leaders had expressed the view that it was important for the two strategic partners to work together and instructed their senior officials to remain in touch on Afghanistan,” the MEA statement said. A diplomatic source said that General Patrushev’s meetings would give India and Russia a chance to “exchange perspectives” on the changing situation in Afghanistan.
The visits are also significant as they come at a time of growing differences between the U.S. and Russian positions on Afghanistan despite more than two years of coordinating at the “Troika-plus” mechanism that included China and Pakistan. Last week, Russia accused U.S.-led western countries of rushing through UN Security Council resolution 2593 that India presided over, and of not paying due attention to its concerns on the Islamic State (IS based in Iraq and Syria) and the “Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement” (ETIM), which Russia and China said are threats to Central Asian security, on freezing Afghan reserves, which Russia says will create a humanitarian crisis, and criticising major evacuation efforts of qualified Afghan nationals, which it says would lead to a “brain drain” in the country.
Russia is also one of six countries maintaining their embassies in Kabul, indicating they are more open to engaging formally with the Taliban government, whereas the U.S. and allies have moved their embassies to Doha.
Taking a different tack on evacuations, the U.S. has flown out more than 1,20,000 people, mainly Afghans, and is still attempting to help more to leave, and needs secure holding areas in other countries while they process their papers to the U.S. According to sources, Burns discussed the possibility of bringing some of the evacuees to India, although it is unclear if New Delhi would accept the proposal. India has been very conservative in its evacuation efforts so far having brought out a total of 565 people, including 112 Afghan nationals on special military flights, and has not issued more than a few dozen special “e-visas” for thousands of Afghans who have applied thus far.
Burns, a former diplomat who earlier visited India as the key nuclear deal negotiator, is one of a number of U.S. military and security officials who have visited New Delhi in the last few months. He had been in Kabul on August 23 and had met Taliban deputy leader Abdul Ghani Baradar, now one of the deputy prime ministers.
The leadership of Mullah Hasan Akhund in the interim government give a clear indication that unless the things changed in the coming weeks, Afghanistan is certainly going back to the pre-2001 one situation when it had ruled the country strictly with Islamist laws pushing the women indoors with no right to education and any other liberty.
Mullah Akhund is a fascinating but relatively enigmatic figure in the Taliban. He has been an influential figure in Afghanistan since the inception of the militant group in the 1990s. But unlike other Taliban leaders from that period, he was not involved in the Soviet-Afghan war the 1980s. While Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar and his deputies fought with the mujahedeen — a loose network of anti-Soviet Afghan fighters — Akhund did not. Instead, he is seen much more as a religious influence in the Taliban. He served on the Taliban’s shura councils, the traditional decision-making body made up of religious scholars and mullahs — an honorific given to those trained in Islamic theology.
Akhund is probably best known as one of the architects of the destruction of the old Afghan inclusive culture as he had in 2001 ordered the destruction of historic giant Buddhas of Bamiyan statues linking its old cultural and religious links with India.
Initially, Omar had no intention of destroying the statues. But the Taliban founder was angered at seeing conservation money being made available for the UNESCO world heritage site while failing to secure humanitarian aid from the United Nations for Afghanistan. As such, Omar sought out the advice of his shura, and Akhund was part of the council that ordered the destruction of the sixth-century statues.
Akhund held a political role in the Taliban government of the 1990s, serving as foreign minister; however, his importance lies more in the development of the group’s religious identity. He, like Mullah Omar, was schooled in a brand of strict Islamist ideology, known as Deobandism.
After the Taliban was ousted from Afghanistan in 2001, Akhund remained an influential presence, operating mostly from exile in Pakistan, from where he would give spiritual and religious guidance to the Taliban throughout the 2000s and 2010s. In this role, he provided the ideological justification for the ongoing insurgency against the United States and the U.S.- backed Afghan government.
Presently there are broadly two factions in the Taliban — a military wing that carries out the day-to-day campaigns, and a conservative religious elite grounded in Deobandism that acts as its political wing. Mullah Akhund aligns very much with the religious faction of the Taliban.
Akhund’s appointment as the prime minister over the claims of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar who served as deputy to Omar during the early years of the Taliban before assuming the position of de facto leader after Omar’s death, had been seen by many experts on Afghanistan as a potential head of state.
But there is political tension between Baradar and the powerful Haqqani network, a family-based strong pro-Pakistani Islamist group that has become the Taliban’s de facto diplomatic arm in recent years and has been successful in gaining support for the group among other local groups. The Haqqanis are among the most militant factions of the Taliban. And recent conciliatory language from Baradar on issues such as women’s rights, working with the international community and amnesty for members of the former government runs counter to the ideology of the Haqqani network.
Akhund seems to be a compromise candidate between supporters of Baradar and the Haqqani network. The delay in his appointment — the Taliban repeatedly put off making an announcement — could be an indicator of internal divisions in the Taliban. But it did not augur well for India.
