We don’t want to be sacrificed in US-Iran tension: Taliban leader

KABUL: A source within the Taliban says the leadership of the group has initially agreed that they do not want to be taken advantage of by the recent US-Iran escalation.

According to the source, there is acknowledgement that the killing of the Iranian elite force commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani will certainly have an impact on the peace talks between the US and the Taliban, but the group does not want to fight on someone else’s behalf.

Sources close to the Taliban said that Iran has an influence on the Taliban faction of Mullah Akhtar Mansour, which is mostly stationed in the western and southern parts of Afghanistan “The Taliban are patriotic people. They do not want the Afghan soil to be used for others’ interests… and they do not want to do anything that they will be hated here in Afghanistan in the future,” a former Taliban commander Sayed Akbar Agha said.

Last year, Iran was accused by the US of supplying the Taliban and some other groups in the Middle East with Fajr missiles. In December 2018, Afghan officials in the central province of Ghazni said they had seized Iran-made weapons from the Taliban in the province. But Iran has always denied such allegations. “Iran will use all possible options against the United States but if it will use the Taliban — I don’t see the possibility,” MP Qayum Sajjadi said.

Meanwhile, the National Security Adviser Hamdullah Mohib in a meeting with the Iranian Ambassador to Kabul has called on Tehran and Washington to end their tensions through talks. “The national security adviser in his meeting with the Iranian ambassador said that Afghanistan assures its neighbours that its soil will not be used against any other country,” Mohib’s spokesman Jawed Faisal said.