Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai was a part of Taliban delegations to the US and China earlier.
New Delhi:
The Taliban consultant who met Ambassador Deepak Mittal, India’s envoy in Qatar, on Tuesday in Doha, educated beneath the Indian Military at its elite establishments within the late Nineteen Seventies and early Eighties. One of many seven individuals who name the photographs within the terrorist group that just lately took over energy in Afghanistan, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai is a key diplomat of the rebel group.
That is the primary time India has admitted to having made diplomatic contact with the Taliban.
Ambassador Mittal met Stanikzai, who’s head of the Taliban’s Political Workplace in Qatar, in keeping with a press launch from the Ministry of Exterior Affairs. They met on the Indian Embassy in Doha, the assertion stated.
Stanikzai educated with the Indian Military between 1979 and 1982 — three years within the Military Cadet Faculty, Nowgaon, as a jawan after which as an officer at Indian Navy Academy, Dehradun.
He’s a uncommon Taliban chief who’s within the English language and is properly travelled, particularly throughout his stint as Afghanistan’s Deputy Overseas Minister when the terrorist group final managed that nation.
In 1996, he visited Washington DC on a failed mission to persuade President Invoice Clinton’s administration to acknowledge the Taliban authorities, in keeping with a Bloomberg report. He additionally led delegations to China, it stated. Stanikzai was additionally Abdul Hakim Haqqani’s deputy negotiator within the talks that had been held with officers of the sooner Afghanistan authorities.
In in the present day’s talks, India centered on security, safety, and the early return of Indian nationals stranded in Afghanistan. It additionally raised concern over Afghanistan’s soil getting used for anti-India actions and terrorism.
