More About Some Scary A*s B*stards In Afghanistan

 


A bloody minded son of a bitch
Source: FBI https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorinfo/sirajuddin-haqqani



Yesterday I wrote about the Taliban’s request (read “demand”) that the United States unfreeze its funds. The Taliban, as you will recall, pitched their plea in terms of humanitarian need. And, to give them their due, the Afghan people are in serious trouble at the moment. The country’s economy had been largely based on foreign aid, and now that’s gone, which means the lights in the country are starting to go out. Hunger is a real problem, particularly among children, and with winter coming, the lack of heat is going to be a killer.


So the international community, including the US, should probably do something to help. The difficulty, though, is that the people leading the Taliban don’t exactly seem like the kind of folks you’d like to trust with either big money, or the weapons you could buy with big money. Case in point, Taliban’s de facto interior minister is Sirajuddin Haqqani, who just happens to head up the Haqqani network, a bloody minded collection of dedicated jihadists within the Taliban which has close connections to Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) agency, and a long history of murders and killings, frequently of the innocent.(1) The Haqqani network, by the way, also had close connections with Osama bin Laden and may have had a role in the 9-11 attacks.


And these people are becoming ever more powerful within the Taliban. The analyst Jeff Smith, writing in War On The Rocks, has gone so far as to call them the “kingmakers in Kabul.” (2)


So the question is, how do we help the genuine victims in Afghanistan…like hungry children, and those suffering from cold and want…but not provide resources to people like Sirajuddin Haqqani, who would almost certainly try to kill us if they ever got a chance?


It is a puzzle, and a deadly puzzle, and I can only hope that somewhere, somehow, wiser minds than my own will find an answer.


~mjt



Sources:


1. ”With Haqqanis at the Helm, the Taliban Will Grow Even More Extreme: The Haqqani network has long been the most lethal and vicious element of the Taliban,” by Abdul Sayed and Colin P. Clarke, Foreign Policy, November 4, 2021, https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/11/04/haqqani-network-taliban-relationship-afghanistan-pakistan-terrorism/


2. “The Haqqani Network: The New Kingmakers in Kabul,” by Jeff M. Smith, War On the Rocks, November 12, 2021, https://warontherocks.com/2021/11/the-haqqani-network-afghanistans-new-power-players/


Copyright©2021 Michael Jay Tucker

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