Webdesk: A former Pakistani police officer’s book claims that Taliban interim foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi met with then-army head General (retd) Qamar Javed Bajwa before asking India to return its diplomats to Kabul.
“The Return of the Taliban” also reveals the Taliban’s tight ties to the Pakistani military. As well as Islamabad’s concerns about an Indian presence in Afghanistan.
The book’s author, Hasan Abbas, is a distinguished professor and senior adviser at Asia Society.
After the Ashraf Ghani government fell in August 2021. India withdrew all its officials and security personnel from Kabul, citing security concerns.
India sent a technical team led by a middle-ranking diplomat to Kabul last June to reestablish its presence in Afghanistan.
In Abbas’ book, Muttaqi “had a detailed meeting” with Pakistan’s then-army chief, Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, “before he could request that India send back its diplomats and technical staff to the Indian embassy in Afghanistan.”
The Pakistani side believed that India exploited its connection to Kabul during the Ashraf Ghani regime to “restrict Pakistan’s influence in Afghanistan”. Thus it was “nothing short of a big surprise that Pakistan signed off on the Taliban’s diplomatic relationship with India,” the book states.
“Regardless, it couldn’t have happened without Pakistan. Pakistan acted this way because it just might open up prospects of some aid for the Taliban in Afghanistan,” Abbas says.
An unnamed Pakistani general told the book that the military is “fully in the picture as to how India attempted to access Anas Haqqani. The younger brother of Siraj Haqqani, via the Iranian IRGC (International Revolutionary Guard Corps)”.
Kabul Taliban leaders include Anas Haqqani.
Indian authorities have met many Haqqani Network commanders in Kabul in recent months.
The book states that Pakistan’s intelligence services continue to suspect Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai. A former member of the Taliban’s Doha political office and current deputy foreign minister. Solely because he graduated from the Indian Military Academy (IMA) in the 1980s.
“This last qualification, though, was enough to make him a suspect in Pakistan’s intelligence services. As they never trusted him fully even though he worked closely with them at times,” Abbas says.
Before the Afghan Taliban took power in Kabul in 2021, Stanikzai was a key Indian contact. He’s been benched lately.
The book also describes how the Afghan Taliban downplayed their ties to Pakistan’s military. “Increasingly conscious of their reputation as closely aligned with Pakistan’s army and intelligence services. They know that the relationship is not particularly popular in Afghanistan. The Taliban have turned to Pakistan for drones and other counter-terrorism equipment to fight Daesh.
Thus, when the Taliban asked Pakistani military and intelligence leaders to publicly distance themselves from them, it surprised them. Islamabad was unsure if it was Taliban diplomacy or hypocrisy. “Relations even started deteriorating once Kabul expressed its inability to pursue Pakistani Taliban roaming around Afghanistan the way Pakistan wanted,” Abbas writes.
Abbas, an officer in the administrations of former premier Benazir Bhutto (1995-1996) and former military ruler Pervez Musharraf (1999-2000), writes that the Afghan Taliban are “hesitant to take strong action against the TTP [Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan] is due to their considered opinion that TTP cadres currently hiding in Afghanistan could easily drift towards joining Daesh ranks in the event that the Afghan Taliban are seen to be ditching them”.
