BackTaliban threatens to takeover Afghanistan as foreign troops prepare to leave
Taliban rebels say they are ready to defeat international troops and takeover Afghanistan, BBC reports
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New Delhi: Taliban rebels say they are ready to defeat international troops and take over Afghanistan, the BBC reported as the country braced itself for the drawdown of foreign troops later this year.
The report came as foreign secretary Sujatha Singh said that Afghanistan was at “a critical juncture in its history".
“Perhaps more than ever before over the last 12 years, Afghanistan requires the constructive support of all its neighbours," she told senior officials meeting in New Delhi as part of the ‘Heart of Asia’ process that aims to foster economic cooperation among countries in the neighbourhood of the insurgency-wracked nation.
The Heart of Asia conference is the second meet that India has organized this week on the future of Afghanistan. On Thursday, New Delhi hosted a meeting of special representatives for Afghanistan from 53 countries and 10 international organisations.
The conferences coincided with a claim by Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahed to the BBC that Taliban rebels were “everywhere" across Afghanistan and that foreign troops were afraid to leave their bases.
The Taliban would bring back an Islamic system of rule “according to the wishes of the Afghan people", he said in an interview aired late Thursday in India.
He also denied any Taliban ties with candidates contesting what he called the “fake" Afghan presidential elections in April.
The Sunni Pashtun Taliban rule between 1996-2001 saw Al-Qaeda ideologue Osama bin Laden taking shelter in Afghanistan. It was from his secure base in Afghanistan that bin Laden planned the September 2001 terror attacks on the US.
Though US special forces killed bin Laden in a secret raid on Afghanistan in May 2011, the return of the hardline Taliban that had banned television and movies and severely curtailed the rights of women is a “matter of worry" for everyone, said a diplomat attending the Heart of Asia meet who did not wish to be identified by name or nationality.
India, which has put in $2 billion into the reconstruction of Afghanistan, is also worried about the return of the Taliban, which is seen to be propped up by Pakistan.
In her remarks, Singh said the Heart of Asia process was aimed at “finding creative ways to tap into the generous financial and technical support that countries from outside the region are willing to provide. Let us use this meeting to introspect on the manner in which the various confidence building measures and cooperation activities have been progressing, and whether we have been successful in linking with the supporting countries who are willing to help out."
Singh noted that preparations were underway for presidential and provincial council elections in Afghanistan in April and that India’s view was that, “We think that all the building blocks for an election that will unite the whole of Afghanistan are already in place."
“The main threat to this election process is the continued efforts by extremist groups to undermine security and deny the Afghan citizen the right to freely exercise his/her franchise," Singh said.
India “strongly believes that it is only through the closest of international cooperation that this evil scourge of terror will be defeated," she said.
Referring to the Afghan reconciliation process—aimed at bringing the government and the Taliban to the table for talks to end violence —Singh said the entire international community should support it.
“While doing so, we must remember that any initiative to assist Afghanistan, undertaken with inadequate preparation and poorly executed, is far more dangerous than no initiative at all," Singh said.
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