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, right this moment in Doha, educated below the Indian Military at its elite establishments within the late Seventies and early Eighties. One of many seven persons who name the photographs within the terrorist group that 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, based on 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 School, Nowgaon, as a jawan after which as an officer at Indian Army Academy, Dehradun.
He’s a uncommon Taliban chief who’s within the English language and is effectively travelled, particularly throughout his stint as Afghanistan’s Deputy International 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, based on 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 right this moment’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.
