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AT Monitoring Desk-KABUL: A key Taliban commander and close aide to the ex-leader and the founder of the group, Mullah Omar, has asked the current Taliban leader Mawlavi Haibatullah Akhudzada to cut ties with Pakistan.
The top Taliban leader, Syed Mohammad Tayyab Agha, reportedly asked Akhundzada in a letter which was obtained by Gandhara, a news portal close to RFE/RL.
“How can the Taliban leadership, now camped in Pakistan, demand that people in Afghanistan or elsewhere pledge allegiance to them?” he wrote, confirming that the insurgent movement’s leaders still operate from safe havens in Pakistan. “Can we consider such acts in accordance with Islam?”
Agha relinquished his position as head of the Taliban’s political office in Qatar last year and has sharply questioned key Taliban ideological tenets.
In the letter, he urges Akhundzada to give up the title of Amir al-Muminin, or Leader ‘Of The Faithful’, and to drop the Taliban’s formal name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
“It will be better to employ the term ‘movement’ instead of ‘emirate’,” he wrote, arguing that without either control over most of the country including the Afghan capital, Kabul, or recognition as a legitimate government it is impossible for the Taliban to pose as Afghanistan’s legitimate government.
“A reliance on media propaganda and forming [shadow] government institutions, control of rural territories, and most of the movement’s leadership being in a foreign country [Pakistan] doesn’t amount to a [legitimate] government in our country,” he wrote. “Instead of Amir al-Muminin, you should call yourself The Amir or leader.”
Questioning the Taliban’s current strategy, which mainly relies on overrunning rural territories and complex urban attacks that often result in a high number of civilian casualties, Tayyab Agha urged Akhundzada “You should give up using violence and intimidation to force people to pledge their allegiance to you as the commander of the faithful until you can meet all the requirements [outlined in Islamic Shari’a law].”
“All the mujahedin fighters should be ordered to cease killing our opponents inside mosques and stop killing prisoners,” he wrote. “Stop killing people under suspicion traveling on roads. Stop bombing bridges, roads, and other similar places. Stop killing aid and construction workers who are helping our nation and building our homeland.”
It is a crystal fact that Pakistan have given shelters to the top leaders of the Taliban, where the death report of Mullah Omar that was killed by US drone in Pakistani soil is a clear example of it.
Before that, Osama bin Laden the leader of the al-Qaeda terrorist group, was also killed in Pakistan.It is a clear indication that all form of insurgents enjoying shelters in Pakistan.
Afghan officials in current and former governmentshad alwayscriticized Pakistan for allowing the Taliban group leaders to use its soil and engineer attacks against Afghanistan from there.
Moreover, a top Pakistani official said that Islamabad has influence on Taliban group and could bring them to the peace talks with the Afghan government.
Pakistan’s foreign affairs adviser, Sartaj Aziz admitted earlier this year that Pakistan has influence on Taliban and could use certain leverages to force the group to join peace talks.
Furthermore, the Guardian on Saturday reported that senior members of the Taliban’s political commission based in Qatar have travelled to Pakistan for discussions with security officials there about possible peace talks with the Afghan government
It furthered that three Taliban officials left Doha on Wednesday for talks with Pakistan officials. According to the report, the men are Mawlawi Shahabuddin Dilawar, a former ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Jan Muhammad Madani, a former foreign minister under the Taliban regime in the 1990s, and Mullah Abdul Salam, a former deputy education minister.
