strategicstudies
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Burhanuddin Rabbani's assassination proves the pessimists right. The process of reconciliation is dead. The story of his death is as gory as it is familiar. The immediate sequence of events leading to his assassination is somewhat like this.
On September 16, before leaving for Tehran to attend the Islamic awakening conference organised by Iran, Rabbani meets the media in Kabul. As the head of the Afghan high peace council, he looks sad, flustered and dismayed. He declares that the Taliban movement has become "a disaster for the Muslims of Afghanistan" and goes on to say that they are "not on right path...they are a conspiracy against Islam", because they are killing Muslims in the name of Islam, recruiting teenagers for suicide bombing and teaching wrong things in their madrassas. Strong words indeed.
Rabbani does not stop there. In Tehran, he starts from where he left off in Kabul. In his address, he laments that some extremist suicide groups in Afghanistan regard the killing of Muslims in the name of Islam as legitimate, and urges the gathering of about 700 Islamic scholars that the time has come to take a strong stance against such groups.
Perhaps this was enough for him to cross the Taliban redline. He receives a call from his office in Kabul that the Taliban have sent their trusted emissary to talk to him and he has to come back. He is told that a senior former Taliban leader, Rehmatullah Wahidyar, who had reconciled in 2005 and joined him in his high peace council, had arranged the meeting.
Read complete IDSA Comment at Rabbani Assassination: An Assertive Taliban and America's Dilemmas | Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses
On September 16, before leaving for Tehran to attend the Islamic awakening conference organised by Iran, Rabbani meets the media in Kabul. As the head of the Afghan high peace council, he looks sad, flustered and dismayed. He declares that the Taliban movement has become "a disaster for the Muslims of Afghanistan" and goes on to say that they are "not on right path...they are a conspiracy against Islam", because they are killing Muslims in the name of Islam, recruiting teenagers for suicide bombing and teaching wrong things in their madrassas. Strong words indeed.
Rabbani does not stop there. In Tehran, he starts from where he left off in Kabul. In his address, he laments that some extremist suicide groups in Afghanistan regard the killing of Muslims in the name of Islam as legitimate, and urges the gathering of about 700 Islamic scholars that the time has come to take a strong stance against such groups.
Perhaps this was enough for him to cross the Taliban redline. He receives a call from his office in Kabul that the Taliban have sent their trusted emissary to talk to him and he has to come back. He is told that a senior former Taliban leader, Rehmatullah Wahidyar, who had reconciled in 2005 and joined him in his high peace council, had arranged the meeting.
Read complete IDSA Comment at Rabbani Assassination: An Assertive Taliban and America's Dilemmas | Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses
