Haqqani Network is the new kingmaker in Taliban-ruled Afghan: Report

 

Kabul: Three months since the takeover of Taliban in Afghanistan, the Haqqani Network has now emerged as the new kingmakers in Kabul. The infamous Haqqani network is a Sunni islamist militant group, often responsible for the deadliest and highest-profile terrorist attacks on US forces.

 

In a report for the War on the Rocks publication, Jeff M Smith, a research fellow at Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center explained how in the new hard-line Afghan government, several members of the Haqqani Network were given key ministerial positions, handing this terrorist group the control of internal security in Afghanistan.

 

Smith notes that it is no coincidence that Khalil ur-Rahman Haqqani, a terrorist with a USD 5 million U.S. bounty on his head, was appointed as the security head  in Kabul, one week before the suicide bombing at the Kabul airport. ‘It increasingly seems that the fall of Kabul was as much a victory for the Haqqani Network as it was for the traditional Taliban leadership. The fox was finally guarding the henhouse. A Taliban-ruled Afghanistan was already a nightmare scenario. The Haqqani Network, with its ‘track record of supporting overseas jihad’, is even more ideologically and operationally aligned with global jihadist groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Afghanistan than the Taliban is’, he noted.

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The Washington based researcher also termed the Haqqanis’ ascendance to power as a victory for Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies. He added that the Pakistan evading the US on counter-terrorism cooperation in Afghanistan would remove any remaining leverage and any remaining guardrails preventing the relationship from a vicious cycle of hostility and allegations. ‘It should lead international efforts to pressure the new Taliban-Haqqani government to abandon support for global terrorist groups, and it should seek to re-establish counter-terrorism capabilities in the country and broader region’, he added.