As the Taliban approach the formation of a government in Afghanistan, senior leaders Sher Mohammed Abbas Stanekzai and Anas Haqqani have been involved in discreet efforts to gauge thinking in New Delhi towards the group.
Both Stanekzai, the deputy head of the Taliban’s political office in Qatar, and Haqqani, a member of the group’s negotiating team, were also part of a broadcast to India over the past week. This has meant that in the coming days the main contacts of any Taliban contact with the Indian side will be considered.
Haqqani, the youngest son of Haqqani Network founder Jalaluddin Haqqani and brother of Taliban Deputy Director Sirajuddin Haqqani, has been in contact with intermediaries in Kabul and New Delhi to assess the Indian side’s latest thoughts on the Taliban, people said. familiar with the events. on condition of anonymity.
During those contacts, Haqqani indicated that a clearer picture of any kind of formal engagement with India would only emerge in late September, people said. This is because the immediate task of the Taliban is to form a government and consolidate its position throughout Afghanistan.
Haqqani also indicated during these contacts that if the Indian side had conditions for any compromise with the Taliban, his group would also have certain conditions, people said.
Stanekzai’s openings, which were formed for several years at the Indian Military Academy (IMA) in Dehradun in the early 1980s, did not cause as much surprise in New Delhi as the spread of Haqqani, whose family he still heads. The Haqqani network. to some of the most brazen attacks on Indian interests in Afghanistan.
Former Ambassador Amar Sinha, who was India’s envoy to Kabul, said the Haqqani Network would have a “special problem” to live out its long connections with Pakistan.
“We can hear this charming offensive, but we also have to put them to the test. There has been credible evidence linking the Haqqani network to attacks on Indian interests, ”he said.
The Haqqani Network was famously described in 2011 by Admiral Mike Mullen, then chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, as a “true arm of Pakistan’s inter-service intelligence.” Recent reports have suggested that the Haqqani Network will try to control the intelligence configuration and the Ministries of Interior and Defense in the new configuration.
Officials from India, Afghanistan and the United States have said over the years that there is strong evidence that the Haqqani Network was behind the July 2008 suicide bombing at the door of the Indian embassy. in Kabul, which killed about 60 people, including defense attaché Brigadier Ravi Datt Mehta and diplomat V Venkateswara Rao.
There have also been reports from the Haqqani network working closely with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) fighters in Afghanistan.
Both Stanekzai and Haqqani have made public statements in recent days that appear to be aimed at calming Indian concerns about the Taliban and their ties to the Pakistani military establishment.
In a statement released last week, Stanekzai said the Taliban want to continue Afghanistan’s political, economic and cultural ties with India.
Haqqani, in an interview with the News18 channel, even went so far as to say that there is “nothing like the Haqqani network but only the emirate” of the Taliban, who want to have good and positive relations with all countries, including India. He added that while the Indian government had supported Taliban opponents in Afghanistan for 20 years, the group did not want to remember the past as it wants to have good relations with all nations.
The Taliban, Haqqani said, would not interfere in the Kashmir issue, even when it rejected reports of links between the Haqqani network and the Pakistani security system as “propaganda.”
Gautam Mukhopadhaya, who was India’s envoy to Afghanistan, Syria and Myanmar, said it is necessary to ask difficult questions about the disclosure in India of Taliban leaders.
“While these guarantees are welcome and should not be ruled out, we should ask difficult questions about the reasons for their spread, which is mainly to gain legitimacy from a country historically important to Afghanistan: India , what would be the compensation in terms of our friends, what security guarantees are worth taking into account the attacks at Kabul airport and how they could protect anyone from the ISI machinations, with which they have close relations ” , he said.
Mukhopadhaya, also a senior researcher at the Policy Research Center, added: “India has had some sort of working mechanism for the security and exit of its nationals, but has not given legitimacy to the Taliban formation. “Once granted, we would have lost everything and had no negotiations. We would also betray the principles on which the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan was founded or any resistance that might arise.”
He said India should not give in to the current trend of Taliban recognition due to uncertainty about the future of Afghanistan, which “could range from a good case of an inclusive transitional administration to a war of resistance and civilians, to an Iraq-Syria scenario. ”But he advocated maintaining a window to continue people-to-people contacts and humanitarian aid, which should be directed through the United Nations or organizations. international.