With the Afghan Taliban taking over most of Afghanistan, the question that arises is whether they will form a government as they did in 1996, with the full knowledge and backing of Pakistan? All indications are that the Taliban is no mood to have an interim government to govern Afghanistan. Several questions arise on this count when the Pakistan factor comes into play. The Taliban, left to themselves have a clear stated goal, that of Taliban rule over Afghanistan. The Military Commission has made it very clear that it will brook no interference from any other political source in Afghanistan. Pakistan, which has backed the Taliban right from the beginning will negotiate the terms for a government in Afghanistan that can be internationally recognised and yet give Islamabad the chance to extract their pound of flesh from the US.

The Taliban issued a statement to commemorate Afghanistan’s 102nd Independence Day (19 August 2021). This statement included a declaration of the formation of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Political leaders from Afghanistan who had visited Pakistan just before the Taliban takeover had publicly opposed a single party government in Afghanistan. The former Speaker of Afghanistan’s Parliament Mir Rehman and several Northern Alliance leaders who had gone to Islamabad had issued a statement saying Afghanistan should be governed by a constitution that is acceptable to everyone. Much ado about nothing, because all these remarks fell on deaf ears as the Taliban steam rolled into Kabul on 15 August.

Within Pakistan, there has been jubilation as the Taliban took over Kabul. Islamist organizations in many Pakistani cities handed out sweets to locals. On social media, some people crowed over the failure of the US war effort and nation-building project next door. Raouf Hasan, a special assistant to Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan tweeted, “Afghanistan is presently witnessing a virtually smooth shifting of power from the corrupt Ghani government to the Taliban.” He added that “the contraption that the US had pieced together for Afghanistan has crumbled like the proverbial house of cards.”

Prime Minister Imran Khan made a curious remark on the Afghan situation recently in Islamabad. Commenting on the cultural dangers inherent in English-language education for Pakistani society — and the “mental slavery” it supposedly imposes — he appeared to point to the fundamentalist Taliban as an exemplar of a kind of empowering authenticity. Afghans, Khan said, “had broken the shackles of slavery.” Imran Khan has for long supported the Taliban and its ideology, leading to his being nicknamed “Taliban Khan”. Imran Khan was also a vocal opponent of the American “war on terror” in the region and blames it for stoking a parallel Pakistani Taliban insurgency.

Prime Minister Khan has stressed the “importance of all sides working to secure an inclusive political solution.” For a nation that has for long backed the Taliban to the hilt and is solely responsible for bringing them to power in 1996 and today, Imran Khan’s remarks appear to be an attempt to divert attention. That is precisely why the PTI and others in the military establishment have cast Pakistan as a victim of cycles of regional unrest and conflict, exacerbated by the interventions of foreign powers like the United States. Moeed Yousuf, Pakistan’s National Security Adviser said in an interview recently that Pakistan was not prepared to see instability in Afghanistan spilling over into Pakistan. Clever rhetoric from a man who knows exactly what Pakistan’s game in Afghanistan is!

This is certainly Pakistan’s moment. For many years, Afghanistan’s leaders had bemoaned the support afforded to the Afghan Taliban by Pakistan, particularly by the country’s military establishment and the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI. In January 2020, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had scoffed at Pakistani claims that the Afghan Taliban was no longer operating from safe havens in Pakistan. Speaking to journalists during a World Economic Forum roundtable Ghani said, “One can also say that the Earth does not revolve around the sun,” he said. Starting in the late 1980s under President Zia ul-Haq, Pakistan had cultivated militant elements in Afghanistan as part of its own regional pursuit of “strategic depth.”

Mujahideen factions that eventually coalesced into the Taliban, maintained extensive logistical and tactical ties with Pakistani agencies, and they continue to do so even today. Their medical treatment for instance, takes place in hospitals in Chaman and Quetta. Their families live in Pakistan and Taliban officials in Doha carry Pakistani passports. It is this very same network which enabled al-Qaeda terrorist founder Osama bin Laden to find sanctuary in a location not far from Pakistan’s leading military academy in Kakul, until a US Navy Seals team killed him in a raid a decade ago. Pakistan played a double game of allying with the US on the war on terror and continuing to support the Taliban and Haqqani Network for its own strategic purposes. So, within the Pakistani establishment there are those who sympathise with the Islamist elements and their extreme ideology, while there are also those who were keen to use this as an asset to counter India.

Former ISI Chief Hamid Gul said prophetically in 2014 that. “When history is written, it will be stated that the ISI defeated the Soviet Union in Afghanistan with the help of America.” He then added. “Then there will be another sentence. The ISI, with the help of America, defeated America.” There could not have been a more accurate prophecy than the one made by Hamid Gul. It is in this context that one must view calls from several global leaders for tougher international action on Pakistan. As Christine Fair writing in Foreign Policy aptly states: “The United States has steadfastly refused to do the one thing it could have done long ago: targeted sanctions against those in Pakistan’s deep state who sponsor Islamist militants.”

Pertinently, within the Taliban today, the Military Commission is at its peak and for them the restoration of the Islamic Emirate with Sharia law is the fundamental need of the hour. So, there is no question of any compromise on that. What the US has willy-nilly done is to play into the hands of Pakistan and give away Afghanistan on a platter to the Taliban, which is exactly what Islamabad wanted. However, the Taliban takeover does not dim the threat of anti-Islamabad militancy and could also encourage Islamist extremist movements and ethnic Pashtun separatists operating within Pakistan. That is why one can visualise Western frustration with the Pakistani connection to the Afghan Taliban intensifying, in the near future.

Read scriptures.

Ismael will never be world power.

Good

flamingREED:
Read scriptures.

Ismael will never be world power.

IF BY "ISMAEL" YOU MEAN ISLAM THEN YOU'RE SO LATE.

ISLAM CRUSHED THE TWO DOMINANT POWERS AT THE TIME OF ITS START (Byzantine and Persia) TO BECOME A DOMINANT WORLD POWER FOR CENTURIES BEFORE ITS DECLINE.

AND I KID YOU NOT, IT'S WELL ON ITS WAY TO BECOMING ONE AGAIN.

motayoayinde:


IF BY "ISMAEL" YOU MEAN ISLAM THEN YOU'RE SO LATE.

ISLAM CRUSHED THE TWO DOMINANT POWERS AT THE TIME OF ITS START (Byzantine and Persia) TO BECOME A DOMINANT WORLD POWER FOR CENTURIES BEFORE ITS DECLINE.

AND I KID YOU NOT, IT'S WELL ON ITS WAY TO BECOMING ONE AGAIN.

I've never heard of Islamic empire like I've known Roman, Grecian and Babylonian.

flamingREED:


I've never heard of Islamic empire like I've known Roman, Grecian and Babylonian.

PLEASE DO SOME RESEARCH ON ARAB/ MUSLIM CIVILIZATION.

IT'LL OPEN YOUR EYES TO A LOT.

motayoayinde:


PLEASE DO SOME RESEARCH ON ARAB/ MUSLIM CIVILIZATION.

IT'LL OPEN YOUR EYES TO A LOT.

There was no Islamic empire, sir. And there can never be.