Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, the senior member of the Afghan Taliban and the South Asian country’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, recently warned Pakistan, saying that Islamabad would experience 1971-like Partition soon. He sent the strong message to Pakistan while criticising Islamabad’s policy of deporting Pashtun refugees. Stanikzai claimed that if this continued, it would be difficult to rule out the possibility of a repeat of Partition like in 1971, when Bangladesh was liberated from Pakistan.

In 1971, the Liberation War (of Bangladesh) began in the erstwhile East Pakistan under the leadership of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (March 17, 1920 – August 15, 1975) in protest against the repressive policies of Pakistan. As a result of the Liberation War, the Independent State of Bangladesh emerged after the breakup of Pakistan. According to Stanikzai, Pakistan, which massacred millions of Bengalis, has started suppressing the Pashtuns this time. It may be noted that the influx of Pashtun refugees into Pakistan had begun since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s, when the Mujahideens launched a war against the Soviet troops.

The Afghan refugees mainly took shelter in the Pashtun-dominated Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province and the northern part of Balochistan Province of Pakistan. Incidentally, Pakistan and Afghanistan have been at loggerheads over the rights to those territories for decades. The two neighbouring countries clashed over border demarcation after the Taliban seized power in Kabul in August 2021. Islamabad has accused Kabul of helping the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) insurgent group to fight with the Pakistani Army.

In such a situation, the Pakistani Army started deporting the Afghan refugees in October 2023. In a rare first, Stanikzai has openly criticised the anti-Pashtun policy of Pakistan. Significantly, he stressed that the Pashtuns living on both sides of the international border never accepted the Durand Line (a border created by the colonial British Government), separating Pakistan and Afghanistan. A section of political analysts is of the opinion that the senior Taliban leader’s statement should be considered as the claim of the Afghan Government on the territory of Pakistan.

Stanikzai was a 1982 batch student of the Dehradun-based Indian Military Academy (IMA). At that time, he was considered as a wrong root of the Soviet Union-backed Afghan President Mohammad Najibullah Ahmadzai‘s Army. A student of Political Science, Stanikzai successfully completed his IMA course and returned to Kabul in order to join Najibullah’s Afghan National Army as a Second Lieutenant. Stanikzai, who had taken part in the Soviet-Afghan War, joined the Army of the Coalition Government of the Islamic Liberation of Afghanistan after the fall of President Najibullah.

Later, Stanikzai became a member of the Taliban. He had served as Deputy Foreign Minister of Afghanistan after the Taliban came to power in the war-ravaged nation in 1996 for the first time. He hid himself after the fall of the Taliban Government in 2001 due to the US attack. The Taliban appointed Stanikzai as the Head of its Political Office in Qatar in 2015. He has been serving as Afghanistan’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs (for the second time) since September 7, 2021.

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Published by Koushik Das

Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das