The Global Coalition to Defeat Daesh censured the attacks that took place in Kabul, Afghanistan…reports Asian Lite News
The Global Coalition to Defeat Daesh has strongly condemned the attacks that occurred in Kabul, Afghanistan recently.
“We grieve for the loss of Afghan and British civilians and American service members at the hands of Daesh/ISIS terrorists. The tragic loss of life is only compounded by the fact that those killed were endeavoring to evacuate or working to conduct that humanitarian mission,” the Coalition said in a statement.
Afghan security force members are seen at the site of a bomb attack in Kabul, Afghanistan
“The Coalition and its partners continue to stand shoulder to shoulder, as we did when we fought to achieve the territorial defeat of Daesh/ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Daesh/ISIS remains a determined enemy and we will continue to take necessary action to ensure its enduring defeat. To that end, we are focused on leveraging the Coalition’s expertise and the efforts of its working groups to counter Daesh/ISIS’ global branches, including Daesh/ISIS-Khorasan, and to identify and bring their members to justice.
“We will continue working closely together under the auspices of the Global Coalition to Defeat Daesh/ISIS to effectively counter this dangerous threat. In that effort, we will draw on all elements of national power military, intelligence, diplomatic, economic, law enforcement to ensure the defeat of this brutal terrorist organization. We will continue to apply robust counterterrorism pressure against Daesh/ISIS wherever it operates,” added statement.
Since 2001, research progressed, enrolment of female students as well as research burgeoned on topics from cancer to geology…reports Asian Lite News.
The withdrawal of US forces and return of the Taliban in Afghanistan has stoked much fear and dejection among research scientists who predict huge losses not only in terms of funding but also of science.
During their reign from 1996-2001, the fundamentalist group brutally enforced a conservative version of Islamic Sharia law, characterised by women’s-rights violations and suppression of freedom of expression, Nature reported.
But after they were overthrown in 2001 by a US-led coalition and a new government elected in 2004, international funding including from the World Bank, the US Agency for International Development and other organisations poured into Afghanistan and universities thrived.
Since 2001, research progressed, enrolment of female students as well as research burgeoned on topics from cancer to geology.
But with the regime now taking over again, scientists fear for their lives and the future of research. While many are fleeing out of the country, those who remain face lack of funding and the threat of persecution for being involved in international collaborations, or because of their fields of study or their ethnicity, the report said.
News reports claim that billions of dollars in overseas finance for Afghanistan’s government, such as assets held by the US Federal Reserve and credit from the International Monetary Fund, have been frozen.
“The future is very uncertain,” geologist Hamidullah Waizy, a researcher at Kabul Polytechnic University was quoted as saying.
“The achievements we had over the past 20 years are all at great risk,a added Attaullah Ahmadi, a public-health scientist at Kateb University in Kabul.
In the last 20 years, some three dozen public universities have been established or re-established since 2010, and tens more private universities have been set up.
Even the student population at public universities grew to 170,000 in 2018 from 8,000 in 2001, and one-quarter of these were women, the report said.
Further, the number of research papers also increased to 285 in 2019 from 71 in 2011, according to Scopus – a database of peer-reviewed literature.
But now “there will be a stagnation of science and research progress”, Shakardokht Jafari, a medical physicist at the University of Surrey in Guildford, UK, who is originally from Afghanistan.
While many researchers have gone into hiding, or plan to cross into neighbouring countries, some are also seeking asylum overseas. In August alone, humanitarian organization Scholars at Risk (SAR) in New York City received more than 500 applications from people in Afghanistan, the report said.
So far, 164 institutions globally have agreed to host scholars, and SAR has appealed to US and European governments to fast-track visas and continue evacuation flights, said Rose Anderson, director at SAR.
However, several researchers report that the Taliban is in discussion with university heads about restarting classes. There are also suggestions that women might be allowed to continue their studies, although the Taliban has ordered that women and men be taught separately, and some universities have proposed introducing partitions in classrooms, the report said.
The British government is facing strong criticism for reportedly leaving behind hundreds of Afghans who were eligible for relocation in the UK behind…reports Asian Lite News.
UK Conservative lawmaker Tobias Ellwood has called the evacuation of personnel and Afghans who worked for the British troops during the 20-year-long presence of the US-led coalition in the country a “humiliation.”
“After 20 years, we are now out, and we have very little to show for it. We lacked the strategy, the statecraft, the patience to see it through. This manner of our departure is a humiliation,” Ellwood, who chairs the parliament’s Defense Select Committee, told Sky News on Sunday evening, as the last plane with people evacuated from the Central Asian country was about to land at the Royal Air Force base in Oxfordshire, England.
The lawmaker and former soldier said that there is a “litany of concerns” about Operation Pitting, as the mission to get UK citizens and eligible Afghans out of Afghanistan following the Taliban (a terrorist organization banned in Russia) takeover was code-named.
The British government is facing strong criticism for reportedly leaving behind hundreds of Afghans who were eligible for relocation in the UK behind.
According to the opposition Labour Party, thousands of letters and emails relating to Afghan refugees were not opened by Foreign Office officials dealing with the operation.
HISTORY TURNS A NEW PAGE
Our exodus from Afghanistan has left the world a more dangerous place.
It symbolises how weak the West has become -a belated reality check that the high water mark for post-WW2 western liberalism is now behind us.
Junior Foreign Minister James Cleverly on Monday admitted receiving a “huge influx of correspondence” from charities, individuals and members of parliament, but said that the government’s priority was to evacuate those who had received approval and had been called forward.
“Obviously, the priority was for the people who were at the airport, who had the right documentation, to actually get on the airplanes when we still had control of the airport”, Cleverly told Sky News.
According to the UK Ministry of Defense, nearly 15,000 British nationals, Afghan staff and their families, and others at risk were evacuated from Kabul since Operation Pitting began on August 13. (ANI/Sputnik)
Secretary of State also called the United States’ next steps in Afghanistan “a new chapter”…reports Asian Lite News
The United States is moving its Afghanistan diplomatic mission to Qatar, said Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday (local time).
“First, we built a new team to help lead this new mission. As of today, we suspended our diplomatic presence in Kabul and transferred our operations to Doha, Qatar, which will soon be formally notified to Congress. Given the uncertain security environment and political situation in Afghanistan, it was the prudent step to take,” Blinken said in remarks at the State Department.
Blinken said that for the time being, the US will use this post in Doha to “manage our diplomacy with Afghanistan, including consular affairs, administrating humanitarian assistance, and working with allies, partners and regional and international stakeholders to coordinate our engagement and messaging to the Taliban,” CNN reported.
The secretary of state thanked the US’ allies and partners for their contribution in Afghanistan.
“This operation was a global endeavor in every way. Many countries stepped up with robust contributions at the airlift including working at the airport. Some are now serving as transit countries allowing evacuees to be processed on their way to the final destination. Others agreed to resettle Afghan refugees permanently and we hope more will do so in the days and weeks ahead. We’re truly grateful for their support. Now, US military flights have ended and our troops have departed Afghanistan,” he said.
Blinken said that State Department believes there is “a small number of Americans, under 200 and likely closer to 100, who remain in Afghanistan and want to leave.”
“We’re trying to determine exactly how many. We’re going through manifests and calling and texting through our lists,” Blinken said. The top US diplomat noted that there are residents of Afghanistan who have US passports who were trying to determine if they should leave, reported CNN.
Secretary of State also called the United States’ next steps in Afghanistan “a new chapter”.
People queue up to board a military aircraft of Germany and leave Kabul at Kabul airport, Afghanistan. (XinhuaIANS)
“A new chapter of America’s engagement with Afghanistan has begun. It’s one in which we will lead with our diplomacy. The military mission is over. A new diplomatic mission has begun,” Bllinken said.
The top US diplomat noted that there are residents of Afghanistan who have US passports who were trying to determine if they should leave.
“Our commitment to them, and to all Americans in Afghanistan, and everywhere in the world, continues,” Blinken said, adding that the State Department would help Americans leave no matter when they decide that they wish to depart.
General Kenneth McKenzie, the head of the US Central Command, made the withdrawal announcement at a Pentagon news briefing.
The last flight, a large C-17 military transport, took off from Hamid Karzai International Airport. President Joe Biden set a deadline of August 31 for the withdrawal earlier this year. (ANI)
“They’re missing life-saving vaccines, including against polio, a disease that can paralyze children for life. Many are so malnourished they lie in hospital beds too weak to grasp an outstretched finger,”said UNICEF Afghanistan Representative ….reports Asian Lite News
There are nearly 10 million children in Afghanistan “in desperate need of humanitarian aid”, said UNICEF Afghanistan Representative, Herve Ludovic De Lys, adding that these children are deprived of their right to a healthy and protected childhood.
“Those least responsible for this crisis, are paying the highest price — including the children killed and injured in a series of atrocities in Kabul since last Thursday”, the senior UN Children’s Fund official told correspondents.
“Again, today, I heard of more unsettling reports – of unaccompanied children across the country…more reports of grave violations, including children being recruited by armed groups…All this in a year in which more than 550 children have been killed, and more than 1400 injured.”
He said that against a backdrop of conflict and insecurity, children are living in communities that are running out of water because of drought.
“They’re missing life-saving vaccines, including against polio, a disease that can paralyze children for life. Many are so malnourished they lie in hospital beds too weak to grasp an outstretched finger,” he said.
“These children are deprived of their right to a healthy and protected childhood”, he added.
Earlier on Monday, a UN shipment carrying lifesaving medical supplies reached Afghanistan by air. It was the first UN shipment since the Taliban takeover on August 15.
Announcing the news, the World Health Organization (WHO) said that the successful airlift meant that it could “partially replenish” health facilities’ reserves and ensure that services can continue, for now.
Some 12.5 metric tonnes of supplies arrived in the northern airport of Mazar-i-Sharif, aboard a plane provided by the Government of Pakistan, UN News reported.
The WHO said that the shipment consisted of enough trauma and emergency health kits to cover the basic health needs of more than 200,000 people, as well as provide 3500 surgical procedures and treat 6500 trauma patients.
The supplies will be delivered immediately to 40 health facilities in 29 provinces across Afghanistan, the UN agency added.
The plane was loaded with the supplies earlier on Monday by WHO’s logistics team at the International Humanitarian City in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
It is the first of three flights planned with Pakistan International Airlines to fill urgent shortages in medicines and medical supplies in Afghanistan.
“The support of the Pakistani people has been timely and life-saving,” said Dr Ahmed Al Mandhari, WHO Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean. While WHO is working with partners to ensure more shipments to the country, the agency said a reliable humanitarian air bridge is urgently required, to scale up the collective humanitarian effort.
Tens of millions of vulnerable Afghans remain in the country and the work of meeting their needs is now just beginning, said the agency adding that the world cannot now divert its attention from the people of Afghanistan at this critical time.
Afghanistan kids
Adding his voice to the appeal, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi has urged the international community to help the many millions in need in Afghanistan and in neighbouring countries.
In an appeal on Monday for long-term solutions for Afghans whose lives have been blighted by 40 years of war, the UN Refugee chief said that although thousands had managed to escape via Kabul airport, “there will still be millions who need the international community to act”.
The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) have called on the Taliban to honour their pledge to protect Afghan women and girls, and to respect and fulfil the human rights enshrined in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. (ANI)
The resolution was adopted on Monday under India’s presidency by a divided Council where China and Russia were the outliers who abstained on the vote on the resolution…reports Arul Louis
The UN Security Council has demanded that the Taliban should not allow terrorists to use its territory for attacks against other countries and this would apply to the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), according to India’s Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla.
The resolution was adopted on Monday under India’s presidency by a divided Council where China and Russia were the outliers who abstained on the vote on the resolution, but refraining from vetoing it in view of the overwhelming global support for the sentiments behind it.
All the other 13 members voted for it.
India played a “constructive and bridging” role at the Council and worked to the “extent possible for consensus-based” outcomes, Shringla said and this diplomacy was evident in saving the resolution proposed by the US, Britain and France from a veto by China and Russia, even as they expressed their opposition.
“Today’s UN Security Council Resolution, therefore, is a very important and timely pronouncement coming as it does during India’s Presidency of the UN Security Council,” Shringla told reporters outside the Security Council after presiding over the meeting on Afghanistan.
The resolution also demanded that the Taliban uphold human rights, provide safe passage to those who want to leave Afghanistan and allow humanitarian aid.
Shringla said that India was “extremely happy” with the resolution as it “highlights the will of the Council to take necessary steps that are very important for the international community in its engagement with Afghanistan.”
The Council action came while the clocks 10,000 km away in Afghanistan rolled past midnight into August 31, the deadline President Joe Biden had set for his country’s withdrawal from there, and the last C-17 aircraft took off from Kabul International Airport.
“Tonight’s withdrawal signifies both the end of the military component of the evacuation but also the end of the nearly 20-year mission that began in Afghanistan shortly after Sept. 11, 2001,” declared General Kenneth McKenzie, the commander of the US Central Command.
At UN, Shringla said, “I want to highlight the fact that the resolution makes it very clear that Afghan territory should not be used to threaten or attack any other country. In particular, it also underlines the importance of combating terrorism.”
“It also refers to those individuals and entities been designated under Security Council resolution 1267 (as terrorists)”, he said, adding, “And in that context I may mention that the LeT and the JeM, are UN Security Council proscribed entities, terror entities that need to be called out, and condemned in the strongest possible terms.”
The Council is “unequivocal” on terrorism, he said. The resolution said that Afghanistan “not be used to threaten or attack any country or to shelter or train terrorists, or to plan or to finance terrorist acts.”
“And I think that also reflects the views of council members, as we understand it from the discussions,” Shringla said.
Although they had differences with other aspects of the resolution, Russia’s Permanent Respresentative Vassily Nenenzia and China’s Deputy Permanent Representative Geng Shuang joined in demanding in very strong terms in their speeches after their vote that the Taliban not allow terrorists to operate from its territory.
US Permanent Representative Linda Thomas-Greefield told reporters, “The Security Council reiterates its enduring call on the importance of counter-terrorism.”
“Afghanistan can never again become a safe haven for terrorism,” she said.
While the Council expects the Taliban to allow those who want to leave, she said that “this resolution also affirms the Security Council’s enduring commitment to those who remain” adding that “we cannot airlift an entire country to safety. This is the moment where diplomacy has to step up.”
“We need to ensure Afghanistan respects the inalienable rights of its people e including women, girls, and minorities,” she said.
Over the last 20 years, more than 2,400 US service members have been killed in Afghanistan alone, reports Asian Lite News
The US Central Command announced that the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan has been completed, ending 20 years of Washington-led invasion of the war-torn nation.
“I’m here to announce the completion of our withdrawal from Afghanistan and the end of the mission to evacuate American citizens, third country nationals and vulnerable Afghans,” Kenneth McKenzie, commander of US Central Command, announced during a news conference held by the Department of Defense on Monday midnight.
“The last C-17 lifted off from Hamid Karzai International Airport on August 30, this afternoon, at 3.29 p.m. East coast time, and the last manned aircraft is now clearing the space above Afghanistan,” McKenzie said.
McKenzie said while the completion of withdrawal drew an end to US military presence in the war-torn nation that Washington accused of harbouring Al Qaeda, the mastermind behind the 9/11 terror attack on American soil in 2001, “the diplomatic mission to ensure additional US citizens and eligible Afghans, who want to leave, continues”.
While paying tribute to the 2,461 fallen US service members, including the 13 troops who were killed during the August 27 Kabul bombings, and the over 20,000 personnel injured during the longest war Washington has engaged in throughout history, McKenzie also told reporters that no American citizens managed to embark on the final five evacuation flights leaving Kabul, meaning there were still Americans wishing to depart the country that were left on ground.
“We maintained the ability to bring them in up until immediately before departure,” McKenzie said.
“We would have been prepared to bring them on until the very last minute, but none of them made it to the airport and were able to be accommodated,” he added.
The General said the number of US citizens currently still stranded in Afghanistan is “in the very low hundreds”, stressing that the Department of State is now in charge of assisting those evacuees.
“The military’s phase of this operation has ended… The diplomatic sequel to that will now begin,” he said.
The General added that the US will continue trying to extract the remaining American citizens and “negotiate very hard and aggressively” to get eligible Afghans to come to Washington.
US media cited a State Department official as saying earlier on Monday that it was believed that there were fewer than 250 American citizens still in Afghanistan.
Taliban welcomes completion of US withdrawal from Afghanistan
Shortly after the US Central Command announced that the drawdown of American troops from Afghanistan has been completed, a Taliban spokesman on Tuesday welcomed the development.
The last US soldiers were evacuated from the Kabul airport at midnight on Monday, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid wrote on Twitter.
“In this way, our country became completely free and independent,” he said.
Shortly after Mujahid’s comments on social media, Taliban members took to celebratory gun firing in Kabul, which lasted for about an hour, causing panic among residents of the capital city.
Following the firing, Mujahid said in a separate tweet that “the gunshots heard in Kabul are as a result of celebratory firing, the Kabul residents should not worry, we are trying to control it”.
The formal stance of the Taliban about the US withdrawal is yet to be made amid the absence of any statement.
Experts observed that US-led Quad, including Pakistan and Uzbekistan, has been created to counter India’s ambitious Chabahar project…reports Asian Lite News.
Afghanistan will not be able to join the meeting proposed by India, Iran, and Uzbekistan on the use of Iran’s Chabahar port in absence of any recognised or elected government there, sources said on Monday.
The new grouping’s meeting was due this month but has been delayed due to the ongoing crisis in Afghanistan, and is now scheduled to take place later this year.
These three nations had, in July, invited Afghanistan to form a Quad to discuss the India-sponsored International North South Transit Corridor (INSTC) project and the joint use of Chabahar port and the then Ashraf Ghani government agreed to join the meeting.
“In July, India had invited Afghanistan to join the group. But due to the changed political situation in the country, Afghanistan will not be participating in the three nations talks on INSTC and the Chabahar port,” an official said on condition of anonymity.
The INSTC is a 7,200 km-long multimodal transportation network encompassing sea, road, and rail routes, linking the Indian Ocean to the Caspian Sea via the Persian Gulf, onwards into Russia and northern Europe and offers the shortest connectivity route between them.
This port is the only gateway for India to Afghanistan and Central Asia after Pakistan blocking its transit trade route via Afghanistan, whereas the INSTC and the Chabahar port together give an alternate to China’s “Belt and Road initiative”.
India, Iran, and Uzbekistan had held their first ever meeting on joint use of Chabahar Port but later Uzbekistan also agreed to join US-led Quad grouping which also included Afghanistan and Pakistan, and would be focusing on enhancing regional connectivity.
Experts observed that US-led Quad, including Pakistan and Uzbekistan, has been created to counter India’s ambitious Chabahar project.
“India has proposed to include the port in the framework of the International North-South Transport Corridor and has welcomed the formation of the India-Uzbekistan-Iran-Afghanistan quadrilateral working group on the joint use of Chabahar port. The meeting is likely to take place in the later half of this year,” External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi had said recently.
The Afghan government had been a major stakeholder in the talks since the multi-nation trade route had been developed by India along with Iran to provide a trade route for Afghanistan, bypassing Pakistan. Its absence is set to effectively stop plans of goods from Chabahar port reaching land-locked Afghanistan, which was earlier set to come up as an important node of the INSTC, experts noted.
In any case, New Delhi has not closed its domestic options, including reviving of the provincial status of the territory, possibly reverting to full statehood at “an appropriate time”, going by the official pronouncements…reports Asian Lite News.
Global media reports supported by security experts indicate that the Taliban 2.0 now ensconced in Afghanistan has come to control $85 billion military equipment, including 600,000 small arms, 200 planes/choppers, black hawks, night vision devices, body armours and medical supplies. Those who worked for Afghanistans defences till last month testify to these biometric details.
Most of it has come overnight, much of it for the first time and most of it from the United States that will evacuate by this month-end.
No banned organisation had this much ever in human history. It is another matter that the status of being banned may likely go, as the world wakes up to the ground realities in Afghanistan. The question now is: Who all in the whole world will pay the price for the multiple mistakes that will certainly not be confined to the hapless Afghan people.
The question is: Besides the opponents, among them the ethnic minorities, who will be the targets of this newly-acquired military might – notwithstanding dodgy assurances by the new rulers?
As one struggles to gaze beyond the horizon from ‘new’ Kabul ruled by ‘new’ Taliban with whom the governments will have to do business, sooner than later, the first point of call for the new regime, nurtured, supported and diplomatically cushioned by eastern neighbour Pakistan, is bound to be India-ruled Jammu and Kashmir.
The key point to note here is that India anticipated this – if not fully, then substantially. It had urged the US all through the recent years not to quit in haste. India had warned the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations to base all American planning and action on one cardinal point: Islamabad’s support to the Taliban. This was ignored, whatever the American compulsions.
Now that it has happened, it is, perhaps, easier to explain why India acted in August 2019 to end Jammu and Kashmir’s “special status”, annulled its political and constitutional autonomy and dissolved the state (province) itself by carving out two “union territories”, directly ruled from New Delhi.
Whether or not it was a ‘correct’ step, in keeping with the popular aspirations, or whether it was popular with the people of the erstwhile province, must now be viewed in the context of the developments in Afghanistan, or to put it wisely, the Af-Pak region.
In any case, New Delhi has not closed its domestic options, including reviving of the provincial status of the territory, possibly reverting to full statehood at “an appropriate time”, going by the official pronouncements.
But this essay is about external security threat to Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh territories with the advent of the Taliban.2. Not to be ignored is Pakistan’s heightened campaign on the way it looks at the “Kashmir dispute” as its Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi tours the Gulf nations and the Central Asian Republics to canvas early recognition of the new Kabul regime.
Indian security establishment avers that it anticipated what was, and is, coming. It has already begun in the shape of attempt at infiltration from across the border before the Kashmir Valley gets snow-bound.
For this, the security affairs primer is what they faced, and dealt with, when forces of the erstwhile Soviet Union had quit Afghanistan, creating a largely similar situation, three decades back, in the 1990s.
There was big spike, it needs recalling, in cross-border infiltration into Kashmir, in tandem with violence by elements drawing strength from across the border. One fall-out was that a large chunk of minority Hindus were forced to flee their homes.
It also needs recalling that after the Mujahideen gained power in post-Soviet Afghanistan, thousands of ‘veterans’ of that war, from a score of nationalities – Arabs and Central Asians, but also Uighurs, Chechens and Serbs – returned to their homes to work for a global ‘Caliphate’.
Born or strengthened in the process were ETIM in China, Islamist outfits across newly-independent Central Asian Republics, JMB and HUJI in Bangladesh and Jamah Islamia in distant Indonesia, besides a host of Salafi-Jihadist bodies in Africa. India faced the Pakistan-based LeT, newly formed Jaish-e-Mohammed and their local affiliates.
The new Af-Pak developments point to a repeat of history, especially in India. While there are fears that the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan may impact the security situation in the Kashmir Valley, there are also apprehensions that this could escalate terror-related violence in the other two Union Territories as well. There are already indications that things could heat up south of Pir Panjal and key infiltration routes in the Kashmir Valley where even a more stringent vigil has been mounted. The routes could be Poonch-Rajouri or North Kashmir. Both the areas have seen encounters taking place.
However, the Pakistan based organisations have also anticipated and planned their moves. Several of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operatives from Pakistan infiltrated months before the Afghanistan situation, as per Indian security forces’ assessment.
There is a definite Afghan-Pakistan link. India’s NIA says close to 1,000 Pakistani terrorists are trained at these al-Qaeda and Taliban camps located in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. Incidentally, Helmand was among first provinces to return to the Taliban control once the NATO operations began to wind down.
India’s Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawathas said: “We were concerned about how terrorist activity from Afghanistan could overflow into India and so to that extent our contingency planning had been ongoing and we are prepared for that.”
However, this promises to be a complex situation affecting Afghanistan and Pakistan as well. As Akanksha Narain, an analyst with a political and risk consultancy firm in New Delhi, told DW, German media outlet, that Afghanistan could face a similar situation after the withdrawal of NATO troops to what it faced when Soviet forces departed in 1988-89.
“Mujahideen fighters until 1989 fought against the Soviet troops, then dispersed to other theaters, from Chechnya and Kashmir to the Middle East,” Narainsaid in July this year.
Now, the world should prepare for this likely eventuality.
Experts believe that the ideological differences among various groups may lead to a difficult situation for the new Afghan leadership…reports Amresh Srivastava
Various factions of Taliban, including the Haqqani Network, working in Afghanistan for a new leadership will lead to complete permanent chaos in the war-ravaged country, experts said.
Experts believe that the ideological differences among various groups may lead to a difficult situation for the new Afghan leadership which seized power a fortnight ago.
Talking about the ideological differences and personal interest of these groups such as the Al-Qaeda and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), among others, the experts observed that every group may need a slice of the cake.
They also opined that the Afghan leadership is unlikely to open a new channel of confrontation as it is busy with the process for the formation of the new government there.
Reacting to the situation, former Indian Ambassador to Kazakhstan, Sweden and Latvia, Ashok Sajjanhar, said that what the Taliban might do is that they will include the representatives of these factions and try to maintain peace.
“There are different sections or components of the Taliban, they have their own rights. But the common thread is that they are established and controlled by Pakistan’s ISI. The Afghan leadership may try to accommodate and try to buy peace, but all of them will jostle for more power, greater jobs and more authorities… So it will be a challenge for the Taliban how to accommodate them”, Sajjanhar said.
He also said that Pakistan will be shepherding and it will put pressure on these groups to accept what would be offered to them.
There was huge disconnect between the fighters on the ground and the Taliban leadership which met in Doha, so the implementation of the policies will also be a challenge for the Afghan leadership, he added.
Similar views were expressed by West Asia expert Qamar Agha, who said that the formation of a coalition government will be a difficult task for the Taliban and “these groups are having different ideologies and agenda, some of them have close connections with the Islamic States of Syria and Iraq (ISIS), with Al-Qaeda or other groups, therefore, they need to have a ‘common action plan’ to take them on the same page.”
“The cadre of the Taliban is not a very disciplined force. Secondly, the corruption is very deep-rooted among the Taliban, and many groups within this militia had behaved like mafia in the past… They were involved in gun running, poppy trade and they are unlikely to give up these practices,” Agha said.
Initially, they may behave with some unanimity but later on the differences will emerge and the possibility of confrontation among themselves will increase. We have seen earlier that the Mujahidin formed the government, but later they fought among themselves, he added.
However, another expert, Nishikant Ojha, disagreed with this and said that the Taliban leadership is aware of these issues and efforts are being made to take them on the same page.
“I do not think that the Taliban will have any problem with different groups with different ideologies and the representatives of all factions are likely to be accommodated in the proposed Taliban government. They have already done their homework considering these factors,” Ojha said.
