Pak ISI and Chinese proximity to Taliban, queer Quad pitch for Kabul recognition

The role played by Pak and UK in cutting out a deal with the Taliban has been noted by India, which is concerned about the group’s projection as a beacon for Sunni Islamic jihadis.

Published on: Sep 7, 2021, 13:06:57 IST

By Shishir Gupta, Hindustan Times, New Delhi

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Replying to a question on whether US would recognise Taliban government in Kabul, President Joe Biden said that it was a long way off. The conundrum faced by the democratic world, particularly the Quad, over recognizing Emirates of Afghanistan is whether the Taliban is a nationalistic Sunni Pashtun force ruling Kabul or is it a fundamentalist Islamic force out on a mission of global jihad or merely a stooge of the Pakistani ISI for extending the CPEC into Afghanistan.

The Quad summit is expected to take place in Washington on September 24. The Japanese PM Yoshihide Suga has the option of joining the summit virtually as he demits office on September 29.

With the Haqqani Network faction of the Taliban pushing back those in charge of Doha political process, it is quite evident that the Taliban government will represent the aspirations of fundamentalists Pashtuns, whose total population is around 30 per cent in the country. This means that the Kabul government will have no truck with the minority Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks, what to talk of women and other groups.

The statement that Taliban will the voice of (Sunni) Muslims throughout the world, as indicated by their spokesman, indicates that they will weaponize Islam to achieve their ends through violence and politicizing the region. That Taliban refuses to end its filial ties with Salafi groups like Al Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Taiba is a sure indicator that they want to be the real shoulder or true representative of Sunni Islam with Shia Iran being the other one. With their ideological Deobandi brothers, Tehreek-e-Taliban and Jaish-e-Mohammad, part of their operations on either side of the Durand Line, the spurt in Islamic fundamentalism as during their earlier avatar is a given.

The Taliban issue gets murkier considering the presence of Lt Gen Faiz Hameed, DG, Inter-Service Intelligence, in Kabul over the weekend, helping out the Sunni Pashtuns take out the resistance in Panjshir Valley with Pakistan Army commandoes in mufti. While Pakistan with the covert support of British intelligence is the via media between the Taliban and the western world, the presence of ISI super spy in Kabul shows that the Islamists are mere proxy of Rawalpindi. The British role particularly that of Chief of Defence Staff Nick Carter and its external intelligence is also under the scanner as Kabul watchers believe that the Joe Biden administration was led up the garden path by Whitehall in stitching out a one-way peace deal in favour of the Sunni force.

With confusion prevailing in Kabul over government formation, the Quad powers will take a considered call on the Taliban government at the summit meeting in Washington on September 24. While usual suspects China, Russia, Pakistan, Turkey and Qatar may join the swearing in ceremony of the Taliban regime, Quad is in no hurry as they are in first verify and then trust mode. Clearly, the Taliban leaning towards China via Pakistan for support will be a deciding input for Quad.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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