“Don’t worry, everything will be fine,” Pame said, quoting Hameed, in a video clip from a press release on his arrival in Kabul. Asked if he would rally the Taliban leadership, the ISI chief stopped to look at Pakistan’s ambassador to Kabul, Mansour Ahmad Khan, before replying to himself, “I just landed. We are working for peace and l ‘stability in Afghanistan’.
Live updates from the Afghan crisis
The first official visit of any senior Pakistani official to Afghanistan since the country fell to the Taliban was accelerated by the deterioration of the latter’s dispute with allies and factions over his election of Haibatullah Akhundzada as leader. supreme. The ANI news agency quoted the unverified Twitter driver of the Panjshir Observer that the shots heard in Kabul on Friday night were the result of a power struggle between Baradar and Anas Haqqani.
Writing for the American website 19fortyfive.com, Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute said the Taliban could not meet the goal of introducing a new government on September 3 because the haqqani and various Taliban factions would not accept Akhundzada. as the supreme leader.
The delay may have signaled a much bigger crisis for the Taliban, which pushed ISI out of the woodwork and forced it to deputy a Hameed-led delegation for the “emergency trip” to Kabul, Rubin said. According to him, “a unitary Taliban” has always been an illusion as “the Quetta Shura is different from the Haqqani network is different from the northern Taliban.”
Amid what appeared to be ISI’s open intervention in the crisis within the new regime, former Afghan Vice President Amrullah Saleh was quoted in a “front-line post” to the UK-based Daily Mail that, despite Pakistan’s claims to the contrary, the Taliban were being “micromanaged” by the ISI. “The Taliban spokesman receives instructions, literally every hour, from the Pakistani embassy,” he said.
The Pakistan Observer reported that the ISI chief was expected to meet with Taliban leaders and commanders. “Issues related to Pakistani security, the economy and other issues will be addressed with the Taliban leadership,” the report said, citing sources.
According to another Pakistani newspaper, Express Tribune, Hameed will also discuss the issue of repatriation and transit through Pakistan of foreign and Afghan citizens fleeing the Taliban government. “The issue of pending applications from countries and international organizations for repatriation / transit through Pakistan and the need to determine the mechanism by which Pakistan could allow them, in coordination with the ground authorities of the Afghanistan, will be discussed during the meeting with Taliban officials, “he said. The intelligence chief will spend a day in the Afghan capital, Geo News reported.
Hameed’s visit to Kabul came after the army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, met with British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab earlier in the day and said Pakistan would help in the formation of ‘an inclusive administration in Afghanistan. Raab had arrived in Islamabad on Thursday night to talk about the situation in Afghanistan.
Some Afghan factions are looking for a more inclusive government and are not enthusiastic about efforts to fight the Panjshiris, Rubin wrote on 19fortyfive.com. The Taliban conquered Afghanistan in large part because of political agreements rather than military victories and have no enthusiasm for the losses they now suffer in ground fighting in the valley and their approaches, he said.
It is Hameed and the factions to which he directly dictates that they want to end Ahmad Massoud and Amrullah Saleh, the two main leaders of the resistance, he added.