“While no country has granted diplomatic recognition to the Taliban, the act itself, though symbolically significant, is merely a hollow gesture devoid of substantive impact unless accompanied by a process of normalization that entails the establishment of diplomatic channels to facilitate constructive dialogue,” London and his co-author, former Afghan Ambassador Javid Ahmad, wrote.
“If Washington hopes to achieve its objectives in the region, it must lead the way and engage with the Taliban to find a practical way forward.”
This is an academic assessment without basis. The idea that a “moderate” Islamist can be used as a firewall against “hardline” Islamists is one that has been repeatedly discredited. Attempts to engage jihadists in the past by the U.S. intelligence community with the intent of advancing U.S. foreign policy interests have consistently backfired, from 9/11 to the Arab Spring.
The only distinction among these jihadist factions is power. They cooperate and clandestinely collaborate against common enemies in the West. Islamist factions frequently aligned with each other one week and were killing each other the next throughout Syria’s ongoing civil war.
Recognition of the Taliban would give its people access to internationally recognized passports through which they could freely cross borders and perpetrate terrorist activities.
The Taliban’s leader Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada keeps an opaque rule from his Kandahar headquarters.
The Taliban views Americans as infidels who they defeated on the battlefield after 20 years. Sources in Kandahar say the ongoing State Department and CIA dialogue with the Taliban office in Doha has zero support from Haibatullah. He refused to meet a delegation of foreign diplomats who wished to discuss opening a school for girls because they were “infidels.” The Taliban leader’s inner circle refuses to accept anything apart from its interpretation of Sharia, and liberal ideas of diplomacy are irrelevant to it.
The dichotomy between the Taliban and IS-K is a false one because the Taliban leadership uses IS-K’s presence and work inside Afghanistan for its own purposes, such as obtaining funding.
The Taliban murders Afghan civilians and blames IS-K to deceive the administration into providing humanitarian aid that it uses for its own devices. The U.S. government knows this. It’s difficult to know which attacks were perpetrated by the Taliban itself as a false flag and which are genuine.
The Washington Post story also notes that Biden Defense Department officials acknowledge outsourcing their fight against IS-K to the Taliban, which is against common sense.
“I would never want to say that we had mortgaged our counterterrorism to a group like the Taliban, but it’s a fact that, operationally, they put pressure on ISIS-K,” an unnamed defense official told The Washington Post. “In a strange world, we have mutually beneficial objectives there.”
IS-K reportedly considered sending a suicide bomber to the 2022 World Cup in Doha and attacking Swedish and Dutch diplomatic facilities in Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Russia, and Turkey. Other targets included kidnappings and small-arms attacks on buildings in Europe.
On Aug. 19, 2022, the IS-K’s highest body, its shura council, held a meeting in Pakistan and created their new cabinet and shadow government for Afghanistan, using areas that were previously used by the Taliban for recruitment, training, and intelligence gathering purposes. The assumption the Taliban and IS-K do not collaborate is naïve.
Foreign fighters have poured into Afghanistan and joined IS-K and al-Qaida, according to Afghan sources on the ground. The terrorist factions have formed a web of alliances where they support each other to attack and operate in the West and countries not aligned with their ideologies. This isn’t unlike what the IS did in Europe over the past decade from bases of operation in Syria and Libya, or what al-Qaida did in the 1990s and 2000s.
Uyghur fighters from China, Pakistanis, Syrian ISIS fighters, and those from other countries have all poured into Afghanistan to fight for IS-K, according to Afghan sources. Most of the IS-K shadow government consists of men from Waziristan, the tribal areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The word surrender for the Doha Agreement is used by the Taliban diplomats and their spokespersons all over the Afghan media. The Taliban boasts about defeating 40-plus infidel countries and bringing about the Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan.
Consequently, it has emboldened the terrorists and inspired them to plan to export their jihad once again.
Some of these factions include the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Lashkar-e-Taiba, al-Qaida, the Pakistani Taliban, and the Islamic Jihad Union, all of which have established roots in Afghanistan.
The Taliban currently enjoys strong external support from China, Russia, and Iran. Consequently, the recent Washington Post report only touches the surface in terms of the resurgent jihadist threat currently metastasizing in Afghanistan.
