Islamic issues continue to be a stumbling block to Western policy strategists, who persistently  see Islamic politics and culture through the lenses of Western norms, giving them big blind spots when anything Islamic does not fall into the neat template of Islam being a religion of peace, a claim that is a big fallacy.

At the Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit last Sunday, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan made the case that ISIS-K “threatens Pakistan from Afghanistan, adding that stability in Afghanistan is necessary.” Khan, along with many others in the OIC and UN, has pleaded for Western countries to donate money to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. However, in reacting to Khan’s remarks, former Afghan President Hamid Karzai accused Khan of not telling the truth. Karzai stated that “ISIS from the beginning has been threatening Afghanistan from Pakistan, not the other way around,” adding a new element to an already complex issue in a country that has been famously dubbed “The Graveyard of Empires.” Khan is making it look as though the regional and global threat were coming from Afghanistan, thus pleading for Western money to control this dire threat.

Pakistan has a longtime relationship with the Taliban, going back decades, to the days when the mujahideen were based in the city of Peshawar. According to an NRP interview, a local journalist indicated that many Afghans routinely see the Taliban “as proxies of Pakistan.”

It is well established that Afghanistan is a historic battleground between rival jihad groups. A rival to the Taliban, the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISIS-K — Khorasan is a region that includes parts of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan) is now a force to be reckoned with, one that even rattles China. Conveniently ignored by the mainstream media, many reports have emerged over time that countries including Saudi Arabia and Turkey have been facilitating ISIS. Establishment Western strategists mostly ignored this, likely because it didn’t quite fit with their notion of Islam as a so-called religion of peace that can somehow mesh with Western democratic principles by means of “dialogue.” Iran is also an OIC member nation with an historic presence in Afghanistan. After Osama bin Laden was thrown out of Sudan, it was Iran which aided al-Qaeda in its free movement into and out of Afghanistan, where jihadi training camps had been set up.

There is thus ample evidence that ISIS and al-Qaeda have not worked in isolation from Islamic countries belonging to the OIC, but have been facilitated by some of them.

Human rights are the least of the concerns of the OIC and Pakistan, but they are issues which appeal to Western sensibilities, and therefore are exploited. For the OIC and Pakistan, the Afghanistan issue is really about Islamic politics. For instance, no OIC nations are concerned about the human rights disaster stemming from the Islamic State’s genocide against Christians in Africa, where Islamic State-supporting jihadis are killing men, women and children in their endeavors to spread the Sharia. Nor have any of these countries convened top-level humanitarian meetings. Of course not, because the primary concern for them is that the Sharia is being spread across Africa.

Pakistan Christian Post provided a warning about the manipulation by the OIC and Pakistan:

The USA (the leader of the free world) should not get blackmailed by these threats of Pakistan which tantamount to saying that the militant jihadis of Afghanistan (may be in cooperation with militant Jihadis of Pakistan and from other countries) will wreak havoc not only in the neighborhood of Afghanistan but beyond it also, if the demand of Pakistan about Afghanistan are not met especially by the West lead by the USA.

Pakistan as per the first resolution of the OIC wants the West led by the USA to merely provide money and other relief to Afghans who are facing humanitarian crises. No doubt the majority of these about 38 million Afghans need such help but the members of the OIC (specially oil rich countries) can easily provide such relief. The 57 Muslim countries of OIC do not need Christian West led by the USA to provide such urgent relief to Muslim Afghanistan.

Adding to the propaganda, according to The Hill, is the fact that Imran Khan “described the non-monolithic Taliban group as a predominately ethnic Pashtun movement, implicitly casting millions of Pashtuns as the Taliban’s adherents.” But this was the real kicker: “The prime minister, meanwhile, said girls’ education is antithetical to Afghan values and went on to discuss ‘Islamophobia’ in the West — an epiphenomenon supposedly linked to the recent refugee influx, which Khan wants to champion as a savior.” Note Khan’s Sharia view of females as inferiors. View more HERE about the status of women in Islam.

Pakistan is a long-time jihad-sponsoring state that has played Americans for fools. It is now using both the Taliban and ISIS-K as foot soldiers to establish the Sharia. According to a report published in the European Foundation of South Asian Studies:

ISIS has created an ideological space for itself in Pakistan by creating deep divisions between the existing militant Islamist groups…There are more than 200 religious organizations operating on national and regional levels in Pakistan, with multiple agendas such as transformation of society according to their ideologies, enforcement of Shariah law, the establishment of a Caliphate, fulfilment of their sectarian objectives, and the achievement of Pakistan’s strategic and ideological objectives through militancy.

Manipulation of the Afghanistan crisis is really about efforts to unite the Muslim ummah and use kuffar dollars to do it. Pakistan is close to the OIC, which controls the UN.

The outstanding concern is control over ISIS-K. Every Sharia-adherent Muslim, group and country seeks Sharia expansion and a global caliphate to unite the ummah, but they differ in how to work toward this, and are also divided over who will be the dominant power. 1400 years of conquest and sectarian violence proves this. Western politicians and strategists, however, are left in the dust when negotiating with members of the OIC.

“Afghanistan has been facing ISIS threat from Pakistan: Hamid Karzai,” Business Standard, December 20, 2021:

Rejecting Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s remarks on terrorism in his country, former Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday said that the landlocked country has been facing ISIS’s threat from Pakistan.

At the Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit on Sunday, Imran Khan had said ISIS threatens Pakistan from Afghanistan, adding that stability in Afghanistan is necessary. “We have had attacks from (the) Afghan border, from ISIL (ISIS), into Pakistan,” he said.

Reacting to Khan’s remarks, the former Afghan president said these allegations are not true, TOLOnews reported. ISIS from the beginning has been threatening Afghanistan from Pakistan, not the other way around, Karzai added.

“These remarks are not true, and are obvious propaganda against Afghanistan,” Karzai said in a statement. “In fact, from the beginning, Afghanistan has been facing ISIS’s threat from Pakistan.”

Earlier, Karzai had warned Pakistan not to interfere in Kabul’s internal affairs. He had said that Islamabad should not encourage terrorism or extremism rather should establish relations with the country through “civil principles and principles of international relations.”

“My message to Pakistan, our brotherly country, is that they should not try to represent Afghanistan,” he said in an interview with Voice of America (VOA) in October.

Pakistan organised a summit of foreign ministers from the OIC on Sunday. An OIC resolution released after the meeting said the Islamic Development Bank would lead the effort to free up assistance by the first quarter of 2022, Al Jazeera reported.

Sources:

https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/afghanistan-has-been-facing-isis-threat-from-pakistan-hamid-karzai-121122000153_1.html

Hamid Karzai calls out Imran Khan, says ISIS threat is from Pakistan, not Afghanistan

Image: Times of India

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