The presence of an interpreter at the meeting between Mullah Baradar and Amir Abdullahian demonstrated the Pashtun identity of the Taliban regime.
Author: Dr. Yaqub Lais Saffar, Analyst
The presence of an interpreter at the meeting between Amir Abdullahian and Mullah Baradar attracted the attention of many individuals and was analyzed from various angles in the social media space.
Since the Pashtuns ruled Afghanistan, royal families from sultans to generals have grown up in cities full of Tajiks and the cultural dominance of the Persian language. They had Persian teachers and probably did not know Pashto like Zahir Shah.
Pashtun sultans, emirs, and ministers, since they knew the Persian-Dari language, presented themselves to the Iranians as representatives of Persian culture and civilization in order to score points. Therefore, there was no need for a translator.
The rise to power of non-royal figures such as Noor Mohammad Taraki, Hafizullah Amin, Najibullah, Gulbiddin Hekmatyar, Hamid Karzai, and Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai did not violate this rule, since they all spent their student years in universities where they taught in Farsi, and benefited from Persian urban culture. It was within this framework that Iran planned to create Nowruz TV and bring the three Persian-speaking countries of Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan to closer cooperation in terms of cultural ties.
The rise to power of Mullah Muhammad Omar, who came from Pashtun villages and grew up in Pashtun language schools and rural culture, upset this equation. With him came to power a number of ministers of his likeness and style. The second Taliban emirate is no different from the first.
The Taliban's sense of pure Pashtun identity has seriously weakened the historical and cultural affiliation of the Persian identity in their eyes. In fact, the country has only adopted a pure Pashtun cultural identity.
This identity is represented in the village dress of the Pashtuns in the internal and diplomatic missions of the Taliban, which has turned them into the most Pashtun ruling regime in Afghanistan. The Taliban not only do not deny this, but are also working to expand it, and this is their greatest honor and achievement among the Pashtuns. The presence of an interpreter at the meeting between Mullah Baradar and Amir Abdullahian demonstrated the Pashtun identity of the Taliban regime.
This meeting presents the Tajiks and Persian-speaking inhabitants of Khorasan/Afghanistan as the major political, cultural, and civilizational losers in the game after the US withdrawal. On the one hand, their claim that we Persian speakers are equal to the Pashtuns in history and in determining the future politics of Afghanistan becomes nonsense. On the other hand, it shows the acceleration of the process of Pashtunization of Persian speakers. Thus, the claims of the Persian speakers that they largely own this country are meaningless, and the Tajiks are the biggest cultural, civilizational, and political losers.
The second loser is the Islamic Republic of Iran. After this, Iran will be presented as the only Persian-speaking country in the world. The territorial continuity of the territorial connection of the great cultural Iran is being lost. As the Pashtunization of Khorasan/Afghanistan expands more and more, Iran's cultural and political influence is weakening significantly. The cultural influence of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia is expanding more and more, and in the long run, Iran as a regional power will be the loser in this game.
As a result, this symbolic meeting with the presence of an interpreter places a huge burden of struggle on the shoulders of the National Resistance Front, which, if it moves too late, will lose everything it has. In the same way, the Islamic Republic of Iran shows that it is a loser in the foreign policy that it has been pursuing so far and is playing on the field of the United States, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. She failed to create a political game in Afghanistan. In this sense, it is not active in creating policy, but a failure who can only have a reaction.
