The Taliban’s Delta variant government in Afghanistan

Mostofa SarwarMostofa Sarwar
Published : 20 Sept 2021, 08:44 PM
Updated : 20 Sept 2021, 08:44 PM

The Taliban's Delta variant cabinet was announced recently. The announcement followed clashes in Kabul on Friday, Sept 3, between the rival factions of Abdul Ghani Baradar and Anas Haqqani. Lt General Faiz Hameed, the head of Pakistan's Inter Service Intelligence (ISI), flew to Kabul on Saturday to pacify the belligerents. And then, just two days later, the cabinet was announced. Although Pakistan has denied any involvement, there are reports that ISI played a role in selecting the cabinet. ISI leadership even assured journalists that everything would be okay — perhaps tacit confirmation of Pakistan's quiet control.

The interim cabinet appears to be a dangerous, extreme strain of the Taliban.

The important portfolio of the interior minister was given to Sirajuddin Haqqani, who has a US Department of State bounty of $10 million on his head because of his alleged attack on the Serena Hotel in Kabul in 2008 and killing six people, including a US citizen named Thor David Hesla. Haqqani will control the police and all other security forces in Afghanistan, including those from Ashraf Ghani's regime, who were painstakingly trained and equipped by US taxpayer dollars. Now, to evacuate Afghanistan of its remaining US citizens, US green card holders, and NATO collaborators, the US has to deal with a man on the FBI's most wanted list.

Haqqani is also the commander of the Haqqani network, which was founded by his father Jalaluddin. Jalaluddin was referred to as a "freedom fighter" by former president Ronald Reagan and "goodness personified" by former congressman Charlie Wilson (D-Texas). The CIA treated Jalaluddin as an asset in the fight against the USSR and its Afghan proxies, and funnelled his network with millions of dollars through Pakistan's ISI. Jalaluddin turned against the US and its allies soon after the defeat of the USSR.

Sirajuddin took over as the leader of the Haqqani network in the 2010s, and continued his father's policy of attacking American interests. The Haqqani network introduced Iraqi-style suicide bombing as a guerrilla war tactic in Afghanistan and courted Osama bin Laden and his organisation, al-Qaeda. Sirajuddin confessed that he was behind the attempted assassination of former Afghan president Hamid Karzai in 2008. That same year, he was involved in killing elementary school children while attacking nearby army barracks. His network also allegedly attacked the US embassy in Kabul on Sept 12, 2011, killing eight people. After 2011's "Operation Knife Edge" and few more attacks, the United States ultimately ceased targeting the Haqqani network, a fact seemingly confirmed by statements on Jan 28, 2016, from Lt General John Nicholson, given to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

To recap: millions of US dollars were spent (via Pakistani military intelligence) to build the Haqqani network—in effect, engineering a dangerous terrorist network strain.  Then, due to the United States' short-sightedness, Haqqani mutated by crossing over with al-Qaeda. The mutation was facilitated by diverting US attention away from Afghanistan to Iraq, using bogus allegations of weapons of mass destruction. Because of the US's failure to use diligent efforts to inoculate against (and destroy) Haqqani, Haqqani was given a chance to grow into something worse.

Other potentially dangerous strains lurk in the Taliban government, again of the United States' own making. Five Guantanamo alumni have joined up, with four in the cabinet and one appointed as governor of the Khost province, which is the stronghold of Haqqani.  Nobody knows how they've mutated as a result of their detainment.

And the government's new Interim Prime Minister, Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund, is on a UN blacklist.

The situation is spiralling out of control. The interim cabinet is ethnically uniform (notwithstanding the diversity of Afghanistan's population)—made up solely of Pashtuns and one Uzbek (Abdul Salam Hanafi). There are no women in the cabinet. The economy is about to melt down. The current, temporary lull in war cannot guarantee peace and stability for the beleaguered citizens of Afghanistan. The Delta variant cabinet will simply worsen the already-deteriorating situation.