Taliban ‘interior minister’ Sirajuddin Haqqani lauds suicide bombers, hands out aid to kin
Haqqani, a top leader of the Haqqani Network that has strong links with the Pakistani military, distributed 10,000 Afghanis (about $110) and clothes to the families of suicide attackers and promised them a plot of land during a meeting held at Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul on Monday.
The Haqqani Network was blamed by Indian and US officials for the July 2008 suicide attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul that killed 58 people and injured nearly 150. Among the dead were the Indian defence attaché, Brig Ravi Datt Mehta, diplomat V Venkateswara Rao and two Indo-Tibetan Border Police personnel.
Senior Taliban leader and Deputy Minister of Foreign Minister Sher Muhammad Abbas Stanikzai has fled Kabul to join his family in Dubai. Multiple sources confirmed that the once high flying Stanikzai, who could have been the Foreign Minister, is afraid that he could be assassinated by the Pakistani spy agency Inter-State Intelligence (ISI), if he returned According to the sources, Stanikzai is accused of having “close” ties with Russia and links with India, by the radical, pro-Pakistan, Haqqani group members in the Taliban government. Stanikzai was educated at the Indian Military Academy. India’s first formal contact in August with the Taliban was with Stanikzai, who was then the head of the Taliban’s political office in Doha.