Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi met in-depth with Pakistan’s former army chief general retired Qamar Javed Bajwa before requesting India to send its ambassadors and technical personnel back to Kabul, a new book on Afghanistan’s de facto rulers has claimed.
“The Return of the Taliban” illustrates how they struggle as rulers to reconcile pressures for transition with their rigid ideology, according to Marvin G. Weinbaum, the senior specialist of South Asian affairs in Washington. It also reveals the pivotal decisions leading to the Taliban’s seizure of power.
The book will be published in the US later this week and was written by Hassan Abbas, a professor of international affairs at the National Defence University (NDU), Washington.
The book states “the Taliban desire is simple — international legitimacy and recognition” when discussing why the Taliban are ready to repair their relationship with India. India has the financial means to provide the “huge external investments” that Kabul’s new rulers require “to reconstruct and revive the country.”
The book tells the tale of Taliban minister of finance Hidayatullah Badri, also known as Gul Agha Ishaqzai, who is believed to have suffered at the hands of Pakistani security forces after 9/11, to highlight Gen Bajwa’s power in Afghanistan.
Later, to show Gen Bajwa his friendship, Muttaqi “personally escorted him to Gen. According to the book, he was only given the chance to become the nation’s finance minister because of Gen. Bajwa’s endorsement.
The Foreign Office advised Gen. Hamid to stay at the Pakistan embassy in Kabul, according to the book, but the overconfident intelligence head disregarded it. The book also addresses the former ISI chief Faiz Hamid’s visit to Kabul shortly after the Taliban took power.
Later, he defended his actions by pointing out that the heads of the US and Chinese intelligence services had also visited Kabul around that time at a meeting with Pakistani lawmakers, including Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari.
The fact that “he was the only one photographed” and that “photographs and video clips of him sipping tea in the Serena Hotel, Kabul, went viral” were both pointed out to him.
According to the book, Pakistan was harmed along with the Taliban because the “visuals provided evidence of the huge influence” Pakistan had on them.
According to the book, Gen. Hamid asked the Taliban high command to “offer both Abdullah [Abdullah] and Hamid Karzai some high-sounding positions” in the early days of the Taliban takeover, but they refused to comply.
Additionally, the book highlights China’s intention to maintain ties with the Taliban government, saying that “China not only kept its embassy open but also welcomed the Taliban’s new status” and lobbied the UN Security Council to unfreeze Afghanistan’s money.
