Impact on India continues.....

By backing the puppet communist regime in Afghanistan, India lost all

sympathies of the majority of the Afghan people and it appears

rather difficult to forget all that. We obviously support the jihad in

Kashmir and sympathise with the Kashmiri people. It is also true that some Afghans are fighting against Indian troops in Kashmir.

The Taliban has not sent them…. We have no intention of exporting our jihad or revolution to any country.” In 2009, Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, the former Taliban foreign minister, said that India made a mistake by not recognising the Taliban and looking at it merely through the Pakistani lens. He urged India to support the peace process and to recognise the Taliban as being an integral part of Afghan society. Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban’s former Ambassador to Pakistan, also insisted that India was at fault for not granting diplomatic recognition to the Taliban. However, he insisted that India was never seen as an enemy by the Taliban, nor did they support any group against it. In fact, he believed that it was “possible for the Taliban and India to reconcile with each other.”

In fact, such statements were made by Zaeef even when the Taliban

was in power. In 2001, Zaeef, in an interview, had made explicit his

desire to engage with India, claiming that the Taliban had done

nothing against India and instead blamed New Delhi for interfering in its internal affairs by supporting the Northern Alliance.

To be continued...