Changing politics in Afghanistan

Rapid change in Pakistan's neighborhood demand exceptional vigilance on the part of policymakers working in Islamabad. Even those who spent their lives studying and managing Pakistan's eternal affairs have been caught by not one surprise but several of them coming together. In the article in this space last week, I wrote about the ongoing war between the Jewish state of Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The Jewish state's relentless assaults on sensitive military sites in Iran along with the assassination of several senior military and civilian leaders have deeply hurt the Islamic state. Direct attacks were not the only operations successfully carried out by Israel that affect Iran. The Israeli Defense Forces, IDF, also carried out attacks on several Iran proxies in the Middle East. On the receiving end were Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and to a limited extent the Houthis in Yemen.

Under pressure from Israel, American President Donald Trump joined the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. He ordered American B52 bombers to fly out of a base in the state of Missouri and cross both the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans and attack three nuclear sites in Iran. The bombers used bunker-buster bombs, each weighing 30,000 pounds, and dropped them on the deeply buried sites in the mountain ranges in in Iran.

Jerusalem had reached the conclusion that Tehran was working to develop nuclear bombs to obliterate the Jewish state. Israel pressured the United States to come to its assistance. President Trump agreed to help and joined the battle in the Middle East. What would be the end-result of this action by the United States is a question I will take up in later articles.

Today, I will focus on some unexpected developments in neighbouring Afghanistan where some leaders of the Taliban have begun to reach out to the world. I am referring to Sirajuddin Haqqani and Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada who has not moved to Kabul to formally head the Talban government but chosen to remain in Kandahar, the largest Afghan city close to the border with Pakistan.

There can be no doubt the officials in Pakistan are keeping a close watch on development in the country to the north, especially on the Afghan terrorist organisations that have begun to operate in Pakistan, causing deaths of hundreds of people, including members of the armed forces.

In the article today, I will draw at some length from an article contributed by Christina Goldbaum to The New York Times. She was once stationed in Islamabad and reported extensively on the developments she observed in the country. Some of her reporting was not seen as fair by the authorities in Islamabad who expelled her from the country. As to the sources for her reporting, she explained that what she wrote came from the Pakistanis who she came across in the numerous parties in Islamabad to which she got invited.

Haqqani spoke at some length with Christina Goldbaum. "He has gone on diplomatic tours and conducted back-channel conversations to espouse his more palatable vision and promote shared interest, like keeping terrorist groups on Afghan soil at bay," she wrote in a detailed account of her conversation with Haqqani in a story titled 'Wanted militant recasts himself as statesman in Afghanistan'. She continued, "He has built relationships with senior former enemies in Europe, as well as with Russia and China, foreign officials said."

"Twenty years of fighting jihad led us to victory, Haqqani told me earlier this year. In an interview in Kabul, his second ever with a Western journalist. 'Now we have opened a new chapter of positive engagement with the world, and we have closed the chapter of violence and war'," wrote Goldbaum.

"Many Western who have been involved in Afghan affairs on behalf of their governments were deeply surprised by Haqqani's change of posture. He was generally viewed as a power hungry political activist. At several points during the US-led war in Afghanistan, the Haqqani family sought rapprochement with the United States, but American officials mostly rebuffed them, viewing them as irredeemable and untrustworthy in light of the mass death they inflicted during the 20-year engagement with the Americans," Goldbaum detailed her meeting with Haqqani.

"Around 10 one night earlier in the year 2025, I sat down with Mr. Haqqani in a two-story mansion just outside Kabul's old fortified Green Zone. A stout man in his 40s with a coarse black beard, he has grizzled look of an insurgent-turned-statesman. Over three hours he spoke about once unknown details of his ruthless calculations against American troops and previously secret interactions between his family and American officials.

He also stressed his ambition for Afghanistan: finally ridding it of violence and war. It is hard to imagine this vision for a county that has been plagued by nearly half a dozen coups, a civil war and invasions by two superpowers within the past century," according to Goldbaum.

During the war with the forces of what was then the Soviet Union, Sirajuddin's father, Jalaluddin Haqqani, cultivated patrons among the Pakistani and Saudi intelligence agencies. He also fostered close ties with the United States' Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA, which paid him large sums of money and provided him with weapons. While these ties were being developed, he got close to Osama bin Laden, mostly referred do as OBL, who went on to establish Al-Qaeda with Haqqani's support.

It was OBL's outfit that trained the pilot that hijacked American civilian aircraft and hit the iconic Trade Towers in lower Manhattan, bringing them down and killing more than three thousand people who were working in the offices located in the towers. US President George W Bush promised to take revenge and sent his troops to Afghanistan in December 2011 which defeated the Taliban government in Kabul. Most senior leadership escaped through the mountain passes that bordered Pakistan. They located themselves in Quetta and started operating from that city, bringing Pakistan into the terrorism's operations.

With the Americans having gone to Afghanistan, the group Haqqani headed launched a fight against the invading American. Haqqani was declared a terrorist and a $10 million bounty was placed on his head to be given for his capture or his death. Haqqani avoided this fate and asked Goldbaum "to ask our enemies how they could not kill me or arrest me with all the equipment they had". Since Haqqani's current approach matters for Pakistan, I will continue with his story next week.