Pakistan used the blast in Kohistan to ensure formal recognition for the Taliban from China, say sources.
New Delhi: The bomb explosion on a bus carrying Chinese engineers to the Dasu dam site project in Kohistan, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan, ensured that China gave a hearing to the Taliban leadership.
The meeting between Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and a nine-member Taliban team took place on 28 July in China, 14 days after the blast took place near the dam, about 350 km from Islamabad. The dam is being constructed by the China Gezhouba Group Company.
In the meeting, Yi, to put in brief, told the Taliban to ensure that it took credible steps to weaken the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) and Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), two organizations that have been blamed for the bus attack, by Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and ISI chief Faiz Hameed, who were summoned to China in the wake of the Dasu attack. As has become a Pakistani custom, whenever any terror incident takes place in the country, both Qureshi and Hameed stated that India was behind the blast.
China accuses ETIM of carrying out terror attacks in the Xinjiang region to establish a Uygur state there. ETIM cadres operate from the province of Badakhshan, Faryab, Kabul and Nuristan in Afghanistan, that are close to the border with Xinjiang. Observers in Washington and Delhi, who are tracking the developments, say that Pakistan acted smartly in the present case by using the blast to get formal recognition for the Taliban from the Chinese Communist Party, which will lead to other like-minded countries following in China’s footsteps. This way, Pakistani army generals and the brains behind ISI, have also gained the goodwill of the Taliban, who, according to inputs, are going to seize power in Kabul in the coming months.
“No one apart from a few individuals in Pakistan knows who was behind the Dasu accident. There are enough documented cases which tell us how the ISI has carried out such internal operations within Pakistan in the past to create a favourable situation for its future plans. But one thing is clear that Pakistan has used the Dasu blast to arrange for a formal recognition of the Taliban by China. This meeting has also led to the Taliban agreeing to follow the direction of China as is evident from the way the Taliban leadership agreed to take action against TTP and ETIM. Now both China and the Taliban are happy with how Pakistan has handled things,” an official source told The Sunday Guardian.
According to a Western diplomat posted in New Delhi, it should not come as a surprise if it turns out that the blast was the handiwork of Pakistani agencies or one of the many terror organizations protected and promoted by the ISI. “The only country that has gained from all sides from this incident is Pakistan and that says a lot,” he said.