Blunting crimes with more crimes

Strengthening IS-K has long-term benefits for Indian contingency plans

The Afghan premier spy agency National Directorate of Security (NDS) is firmly in control of two Indian lapdogs: Amrullah Saleh and Ashraf Ghani. It announced last week that Afghan forces killed Al Qaeda leader Husam Abd Al Rauf who went by the nom de guerre Abu Muhsin Al Masri in Kunsaf, a village in Ghazni province. Details of the raid that killed Rauf remains murky, but the reasons are not. The veracity of Kabul’s claim is in doubt because neither Afghan intelligence nor Amanullah Kamrani, the deputy head of Ghazni’s provincial council, provided details over how authorities identified Rauf. Wahidullah Jumazada, a spokesman for the provincial governor in Ghazni, only said that Afghan forces killed six suspected militants without acknowledging that the dead included Rauf.

Breaking that news has a prequel. Last week, the Taliban killed about 40 security forces in the early hours of Wednesday reminiscent of the 40 Indian soldiers killed in Pulwama in 2019. And just as the Indians had made a joke of themselves by sending their soldiers into Pakistani airspace in retaliation, the Afghan forces in retaliation attacked a mosque in northern Takhar province, killing 12 innocent worshippers including children. Kabul labelled the dead as Taliban, mimicking Israeli viciousness: kill innocent children and then dehumanise them by labelling them as terrorists, all to sanitise one’s own crimes.

When the news broke out, Afghan Vice President Amrullah Saleh, the Indian lapdog, ordered the arrest of the reporter who reported the mosque attack. Taking pride in his immoral action, he tweeted, “the person responsible for the spread of this venomous & fake news was arrested immediately.” Human Rights Watch said, Saleh “is trying to silence those who reported a potentially unlawful airstrike that killed civilians, including many children.” Up until this point is the prequel.

It was right around this time when two attacks happened: an IS-K (Islamic State Khorasan) attack targeting a Kabul education centre, Kawsar-e Danish center, which killed 24 students including many teenagers and the NDS broke the news of Rauf’s killing. The timing is very convenient.

It’s a desperate attempt by Kabul to blunt the backlash resulting from the immoral and illegal actions it indulged in this past week. It changes the topic from Kabul’s terrorism to Al Qaeda and IS-K with Kabul being the good guy. October marks the month when America waged war in Afghanistan in 2001. By announcing to have hunted down Rauf, Kabul is attempting to highlight its utility to the Americans about killing an enemy the American people have almost forgotten about.

Furthermore, Kabul claimed without any evidence that the Taliban were protecting Rauf. That narrative discredits the Taliban’s word to the Americans about never allowing any foreign terror group on Afghan soil to plan attacks against America. The IS-K attack mentioned above also brings to the fore the question mark on the Taliban ability to keep their end of that very bargain. It’s beyond doubt that IS-K is the body of shock troops creating violence exactly in line with the interests of New Delhi and Kabul. The work of IS-K has the fingerprints of the filthy hands of India. Kabul is not in danger, Kabul is the danger.

This only serves the interests of Kabul and New Delhi by complicating America’s quest to withdraw from Afghanistan. That’s a stronger smoking gun showing links between ISIS and India than the claim Kabul has regarding Taliban’s connections with Al Qaeda. Strengthening IS-K also has long-term benefits for Indian contingency plans: if America goes ahead with the withdrawal regardless of who wins the US presidential election, there should be an Indian counterforce to the Taliban to keep Pakistan’s western frontier destabiliaed. An India-ISIS alliance is the most suited to achieve that.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 29^th, 2020.

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