Antipathy towards Persian speakers is part of the strategy of the United States of America and Great Britain, as well as the strategy of the Russian Foreign Ministry!
Author: Fayaz Bahraman Najimi, analyst of regional and global issues, member of the Sangar Advisory Board.
A major lobbyist and main supporter of the Taliban in the Russian Foreign Ministry, Zamir Kabulov, announced a meeting in the Moscow format on Afghanistan at the end of September.
A new meeting in the Moscow format will be held in Kazan.
Taliban Foreign Minister Mawlawi Amirkhan Muttaqi was invited to the meeting. The invitation to Muttaqi was sent by the Russian Ambassador to Kabul, Dmitry Zhirnov. There is no news about other participants.
The first point is the venue of the meeting, that is, Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan. After the capture of Kabul by the Taliban, Russia is showing great interest in the Tatars of Afghanistan. Muttaqi also backed Russia's attention. Previously, Afghan Tatars existed only on paper. Neither during the reign of the People's Democratic Party nor during the republic, it was clear how many Tatars there were. It was only said that they mainly live in the provinces of Samangan and Balkh and that most of them either call themselves Tajiks or Hazaras, and Uzbeks too but did not know the Tatar language.
Kabulov's interest must be rooted in his own background, sometimes described as a Tatar and sometimes as a Bukharan Jew. But it seems that his interest is more economic than political, and help in finding a political solution also goes through the economic channel.
If in the days of the republic the “Moscow format” had political weight, today it does not exist. Russia is mired in a war in Ukraine, and Prigozhin's rebellion has dealt a blow to the Kremlin's prestige. Russia has no way to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table with their adversaries, who are all in the hands of the US and its allies.
On the one hand, Kabulov's efforts are motivated by the demands of the liberal Westernizers of the Russian government, who have dealt several blows to national conservatives in recent weeks, and on the other hand, he may have a personal economic motive.
Earlier I wrote that the Amirkhan Muttaki family, with the help of the Russian Embassy in Kabul, with the assistance of Zamir Kabulov, and the support of Alisher Usmanov, one of the great Russian billionaires, received the privilege of importing Russian oil and gas ( to Afghanistan and Pakistan). Now people like Muttaqi have become multimillionaires. Muttaqi himself does not play an important and influential role in the structure of the Taliban, but his name is very important for deceiving the Kremlin.
Kabulov met the Taliban during the 1990s hostage-taking of Russian pilots in Kandahar along with Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout and has since played the role of a Taliban lobbyist.
He has poor relations with other ethnic groups, especially Tajiks. The reason may be related to his embassy at the beginning of the interim government of Karzai, who expected to work with the Tajiks. Still, Marshal Fahim informed the Americans of his intention, which caused discontent among Zalmay Khalilzad. This caused him cold relations with the leaders of Jamiat-e-Islami and may have turned into hatred with Persian speakers.
After that, only relations with Pashtuns are visible in his career!
The late Shah Mahmoud (Mikhail Shah), second secretary of the Russian embassy, who was killed last year in what appeared to be a terrorist attack but was actually a mafia attack, once told me a story:
"At a meeting organized in the garden of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kabul, Mullah Baradar mistook Dmitri Zhirnov for Kabulov and asked Mahmoud in Pashto why Kabulov did not speak at all that night".
He told this story in response to my question “What did Mullah Baradar say in his ear?”. This moment was impressed in one of the photos from that party (unfortunately, I did not save these photos, because I did not think that he - Shah Mahmoud - would leave us soon, and secondly, it was his request not to keep them ).
And in the end:
In Afghanistan's chess game, the Kazan meeting does not matter, and it is already clear that it will have no other results than the formation of public opinion in favor of the Taliban.
The strategy of changing the political geography of the region began at the behest of America.
Kabulov either does not know this strategy or wants to open Moscow's window in its favor.
The goal of the new strategy is to create a state of Greater Pashtunistan from the Amu River to the Indus River, which the United States has been planning for the past two decades and began its practical plan with the rise of the Taliban.
For me, the meeting in Kazan is a meeting in the spirit of the big American program, which is carried out after the statement by the Russian Foreign Minister about three Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf against the backdrop of a large territory of Persian speakers.
Antipathy towards Persian speakers is part of the strategy of the United States of America and Great Britain, as well as the strategy of the Russian Foreign Ministry!
Soviet-era pro-Pashtun experts lack the foresight and do not know that their support for the Taliban terrorists will bring them many victims themselves.
Russia's backyard in Central Asia is in danger and will eventually include the Caucasus and southern European regions of Russia, including Kazan!
Unfortunately, the Russian Foreign Ministry has embarked on a course of double morality. Fights the Zelenskiy regime as a "terrorist" but engages in political relations and economic trade with the Taliban terrorist regime, which has taken two-thirds of the non-Pashtun population hostage.
In a word, what Kabulov does on the Afghan chessboard is zugzwang - forcing a move - when any player's move leads to a deterioration in his position, which in our case is the position of Russia.
Non-Pashtuns, especially Persian speakers, consider Kabulov's actions against them and will never forgive him for this!
In the next article, I will talk about the plan for America's great Pashtunistan.