Situation is Complicated and if Peace Efforts failed, Resistance front to Stand up again

The Chief Executive of Jamiat-e Islami Ata Mohammad Noor, during his recent trip to New Delhi, said that Once U.S. leaves, Pakistan will gain more space in Afghanistan.

“We never forgot what India did for us. When many other countries were supporting the terrorists and the Taliban, India supported the National Resistance Front,” Mr Noor said, recounting the attack during his visit to Delhi this week. “As Governor, I might have had 10,000 soldiers, but I felt it was my personal responsibility to repay India for the hospitality we had received then,” he said, referring to how India had assisted the National Resistance Front during the 1990s, when he fought as part of the Mujahideen alongside Ahmed Shah Masood to overthrow the Taliban in 2001. According to the Hindu.

Four years later, Mr. Noor is in Delhi on a diplomatic mission: calling for India to take a keener interest in the Afghan situation, that he fears will deteriorate if U.S. forces pull out completely, as they have announced they will, and Doha talks with the Taliban fail to make headway. Mr. Noor, whose son Khalid is the youngest member of the Afghan negotiating team in talks with the Taliban, is himself not sanguine about the success of the talks.
“The situation is complicated, and that is the reason I am here,” he told The Hindu in response to a question about worries that Afghanistan could return to a situation like 1996, when the Taliban took control of Kabul and allowed foreign groups like al-Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Toiba to grow. “I want to thank India for its proactive diplomacy in the past, and ask them to be more proactive. Unfortunately, as the U.S. leaves, the Taliban will be more aggressive, and Pakistan will gain more space,” he added, referring to Pakistan as the “mother of the Taliban”.

When asked what he meant by “proactive diplomacy”, Mr. Noor said that during his talks in Delhi with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Foreign Secretary Harsh Shringla, he had spoken of the need for India to remain “in the game”, to have a robust presence in building regional consensus for peace, to help facilitate Intra-Afghan talks, and to support the Afghan government. He said he had also asked India to consider talking to the Taliban directly, in an effort to “broaden India’s interests” and to “dilute the influence of others”.

Mr. Noor said the former ‘Resistance’ leaders are now united with the Ghani government in their defence of Afghanistan.
“If needed, we will all come together to fight again,” he says. “It won’t be the Northern Alliance… but the resistance will be there,” he added.