Pak sent ISI official to Turkey to meet Afghan leaders, offer talks with Taliban

A senior Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) official recently travelled to Turkey to convey to Afghan political leaders an offer from Pakistan to host them for talks with the Taliban, people familiar with the matter said.

The ISI official, who was in Turkey during December, was in contact directly with several Afghan leaders, including former ministers, or with their aides to convey the offer from Islamabad. Significantly, most of the leaders contacted by the intelligence operative are perceived to be anti-Taliban or friendly towards India.

Among the leaders the ISI official reached out to were Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, former foreign minister Salahuddin Rabbani and Abdul Rashid Dostum, the people cited above said. It was not immediately clear how the Afghan leaders, who view the Pakistani leadership with deep suspicion, responded to the overture from Islamabad.

Sayyaf, believed to be in his mid-70s, moved to New Delhi following the fall of the Ashraf Ghani government and the takeover of Kabul by the Taliban in mid-August 2021. He left India for Turkey only last month as he believed more could be done to forge an anti-Taliban movement by networking with other Afghan leaders already in that country.

Dostum is perceived as a key player in efforts to put together a government-in-exile or to create a resistance force in Afghanistan.

The fresh move by Pakistan appears to be aimed at completely shutting out India as a player in Afghanistan, the people cited above said. After an interregnum of several months following the Taliban takeover, the Indian side recently resumed contacts with elements from the former government of Ashraf Ghani and other political leaders who fled Afghanistan, the people added.

Pakistan’s foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has been criticised by Afghan politicians for acting like “Afghanistan’s foreign minister” by advocating on behalf of the Taliban setup, which is yet to be formally recognised by any country.

The move by Pakistan also came ahead of a visit this month by Taliban acting foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi to Iran, where he met Ahmad Massoud, who heads the National Resistance Front (NRF), and former minister Ismail Khan and urged them to end their resistance and return to Afghanistan. Muttaqi has said he assured the Afghan leaders that they could “come back to live freely and safely in Afghanistan”.

“Clearly, the Taliban want to shut down any form of resistance and their backers in Pakistan are seeking to bolster these efforts,” one of the people cited above said.

Sameer Patil, senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, said the effort by the ISI shows “who is the real driver in shaping political developments in Afghanistan post-August 2021”.

“This appears to be a response to the international criticism that the Taliban’s interim cabinet is not inclusive and didn’t have representation from other Afghan factions. This is an effort to suss out a response from the other factions on how amenable they are to cooperate with the Taliban,” Patil said.