WHY SOME SCIENTISTS THINK CONSCIOUSNESS PERSISTS AFTER DEATH

We should not assume that pepole who are near death do not know what we are saying

Electrocardiogram in hospital surgery operating emergency room showing patient heart rate with blur team of surgeons background

 SEPTEMBER 3, 2021

Electrocardiogram in hospital surgery operating emergency room showing patient heart rate with blur team of surgeons background

A very significant change that happened in the last century or so has been the ability of science professionals to see what happens when people are thinking, especially under traumatic conditions.

It was not a good moment for materialist theories. Here is one finding (there are many others): Death is a process, usually, not simply an event.

Consciousness can persists after clinical death. A more accurate way of putting things might be that the brain is able to host consciousness for a short period after clinical death. Some notes on recent findings:

The short answer is, probably, yes:

Recent studies have shown that animals experience a surge in brain activity in the minutes after death. And people in the first phase of death may still experience some form of consciousness, [Sam] Parnia said. Substantial anecdotal evidence reveals that people whose hearts stopped and then restarted were able to describe accurate, verified accounts of what was going on around them, he added.

“They’ll describe watching doctors and nurses working; they’ll describe having awareness of full conversations, of visual things that were going on, that would otherwise not be known to them,” he explained. According to Parnia, these recollections were then verified by medical and nursing staff who were present at the time and were stunned to hear that their patients, who were technically dead, could remember all those details.

MINDY WEISBERGER, “ARE ‘FLATLINERS’ REALLY CONSCIOUS AFTER DEATH?” 

AT LIVESCIENCE (OCTOBER 4, 2017)

Death is probably, in most cases, a process rather than a single event:

Time of death is considered when a person has gone into cardiac arrest. This is the cessation of the electrical impulse that drive the heartbeat. As a result, the heart locks up. The moment the heart stops is considered time of death. But does death overtake our mind immediately afterward or does it slowly creep in?

Some scientists have studied near death experiences (NDEs) to try to gain insights into how death overcomes the brain. What they’ve found is remarkable, a surge of electricity enters the brain moments before brain death. One 2013 study out of the University of Michigan, which examined electrical signals inside the heads of rats, found they entered a hyper-alert state just before death.

PHILIP PERRY, “AFTER DEATH, YOU’RE AWARE THAT YOU’VE DIED, SAY SCIENTISTS” AT BIGTHINK (OCTOBER 24, 2017)

Despite claims, current science does not do a very good job of explaining human experience just before death:

Researchers have also explained near-death experiences via cerebral anoxia, a lack of oxygen to the brain. One researcher found air pilots who experienced unconsciousness during rapid acceleration described near-death experience-like features, such as tunnel vision. Lack of oxygen may also trigger temporal lobe seizures which causes hallucinations. These may be similar to a near-death experience.

But the most widespread explanation for near-death experiences is the dying brain hypothesis. This theory proposes that near-death experiences are hallucinations caused by activity in the brain as cells begin to die. As these occur during times of crisis, this would explain the stories survivors recount. The problem with this theory, though plausible, is that it fails to explain the full range of features that may occur during near-death experiences, such as why people have out-of-body experiences.

NEAL DAGNALL AND KEN DRINKWATER, “ARE NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES HALLUCINATIONS? EXPERTS EXPLAIN THE SCIENCE BEHIND THIS PUZZLING PHENOMENON” AT THE CONVERSATION (DECEMBER 4, 2018)

Such explanations are a classic case of adapting a materialist hypothesis to fit whatever has happened. They don’t explain, for example, terminal lucidity, where many people suddenly gain clarity about life.

Research medic Sam Parnia found, for example, that, of 2000 patients with cardiac arrest,

Some died during the process. But of those who survived, up to 40 percent had a perception of having some form of awareness during the time when they were in a state of cardiac arrest. Yet they weren’t able to specify more details.

CATHY CASSATA, “WE MAY STILL BE CONSCIOUS AFTER WE DIE” AT HEALTHLINE (SEPTEMBER 24, 2018) THE PAPER REQUIRES A SUBSCRIPTION.

So we should not assume that people who are on the way out cannot understand us. Maybe they can — and would like to hear that they are still loved and will be missed.

You may also wish to read: Do people suddenly gain clarity about life just before dying?

 New Brunswick

Province leaves bargaining table as strike votes loom for thousands of public-sector workers

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Higgs says CUPE 'chose not to' have meaningful discussion, CUPE says province 'refused' to respond to proposal

Jacques Poitras · CBC News · Posted: Sep 03, 2021 

CUPE New Brunswick president Steve Drost, seen with dozens of bargaining team members. By next week, more than 22,000 workers from 10 locals of the Canadian Union of Public Employees expect to hold strike votes. (Jacques Poitras/CBC News)

Crunch time is approaching for Premier Blaine Higgs and his relationship with public-sector unions in New Brunswick.

By next week, more than 22,000 workers from 10 locals of the Canadian Union of Public Employees expect to hold strike votes.

And if deals aren't signed, they could be walking off the job before the end of September.

"It would have quite a serious impact on the province. It would basically, after a number of days, shut the province down," said CUPE New Brunswick president Steve Drost.

"If these groups decide to pull their services … it would have quite a detrimental impact on the province."

Workers in 10 locals without contracts

The 10 union locals include workers in the health care, education, transportation and agricultural sectors, as well as social workers, jail guards, court stenographers, and staff at Worksafe NB, the New Brunswick Community Colleges and N.B. Liquor.

All have been without contracts since between 2016 and 2019.

"These workers never wanted to take strike action, but they feel they've been backed into a corner," Drost said.

Earlier this year, CUPE gave the province 100 days to reach agreements. That deadline expires Sept. 7.

Union and government bargaining teams have been in separate meeting rooms in a Fredericton hotel since Tuesday, passing proposals back and forth.

On Friday morning, the province left the bargaining table, CUPE said in an email to reporters.

The union said government negotiators "refused to respond" to a proposal it delivered Thursday night and did not want to negotiate unless CUPE agreed to concessions.

In a statement, Higgs said CUPE had refused to budge from a demand for five-per-cent annual wage increases over four years "and was planning strike votes for next week while we were at the table this week.

"The union had the opportunity to engage in meaningful negotiations but chose not to on all subjects, which is very disappointing," he said.

Higgs said the union's demand would have cost $158 million, while the province's latest counter-offer would have cost $71 million.

Premier Blaine Higgs has said wage restraint was necessary because COVID-19 pushed the province into a precarious financial position. (Jon Collicott/CBC)

Pandemic put pressure on finances: Higgs

Last December, Higgs said he would ask public-sector unions to agree to four-year contracts with no wage increase in one year and one-per-cent wage increases in each of the three remaining years.

He said wage restraint was necessary because COVID-19 had pushed the province into a precarious financial position.

• Unions call out premier on wage freeze plan 

This year's provincial budget projected a deficit of $244.8 million. The government had planned to release its first-quarter financial update on Thursday but that was later postponed.

Drost said years of wage increases below the pace of the cost of living have forced many public employees to take on second jobs or leave their jobs altogether. Others can't keep up with rents that are rising far faster than their salaries, he said.

Centralized wage negotiation process requested

In August, Higgs asked the CUPE locals to agree to a centralized wage negotiation process. All 10 locals are in talks with provincial negotiators to try to reach a single wage template for all their collective agreements.

If that happens, they'd then finalize the other non-wage terms of each contract individually.

• 6,000 nurses, health-care workers reject tentative contracts with N.B. government

Drost said last week the province proposed a new six-year wage package with one-per-cent increases in each of the first four years followed by two-per-cent increases in the fifth and sixth years.

He said that was "quite an insult" because it was identical to the package recently rejected by the New Brunswick Nurses Union.

Higgs said Friday that the province had made a new offer of annual increases of 1.25 per cent over four years and then two per cent in the fifth and sixth years.

But in return he wanted CUPE to agree to concessions, including converting members' pensions to the shared-risk model used elsewhere in the civil service and transferring about 100 union members to management positions.

The statement also said the province offered an extra 2.5 per cent wage increase if members agreed to give up a retirement allowance that now exists.

The premier's statement says contingency plans are in place if union locals opt to strike.

WORKERS COOPERATIVE

A Tea Garden Run By Its Workers: What Was and What Could Have Been

The story of the Sonali tea estate in the Dooars of north Bengal is a sobering reminder of the capacities of labour power and the forces forever plotting to destroy it.

The Sonali tea estate in the Dooars of north Bengal. Photo: Rupam Deb


Rupam Deb

September 4, 2021, marks the 47th anniversary of a possibility that was squandered. In a nondescript corner of North Bengal, abandoned tea workers proved that an alternative future was possible. This is the story of a certain past that still holds the key to the present.

It has been pieced together thanks to the accounts of Mattu Oraon, one of the three surviving members of the original cooperative, professor Sharit Bhowmick, and others including Tapan Deb, Ram Avatar Sharma, and Chandan Sengupta. I am especially grateful to the July-September 1995 edition of Bartika, edited by Mahashweta Devi.

§

The Dooars, literally meaning ‘doors’, are the piedmont areas in North Bengal at the edge of the mighty Himalayas. They are carpeted with tea gardens for miles at a stretch. One such tea garden is the Sonali garden.

To the south of Sonali flows the Teesta. Its eastward perimeter is flanked by the Gheesh river and the west by Leesh. Both are dry riverbeds except in the monsoons, when they turn into raging torrents. Moving past an Army camp, we enter Sonali, a garden without an operational factory.



A board pointing to the tea estate in the Dooars of north Bengal. Photo: Rupam Deb

Birenchandra Ghosh of Jalpaiguri took over the garden in 1955, naming it after his daughter Sonali. Before that, it was the out division of the Bagrakote Tea Company and was called the Shaogaon tea estate.

Apart from a few, the workers are all of Oraon origin. The tribe settled in the Dooars in the last quarter of the 19th century.

Bleeding from heavy debt, Biren Ghosh sold the estate to one Khemka ostensibly concentrated on financially draining the garden of what remained. On September 24, 1973, Khemka fled, leaving behind Rs 3 lakhs as payment for the non-plucking season and Rs 1 lakh more as provident fund.

When the garden workers went to Khemka’s address in Calcutta, he wrote to them, “I don’t want to run the garden, the workers can run it.” A few days passed until one night the workers sat to figure out their and the garden’s fates. The story goes that a woman worker spoke up at the meeting, saying they must go to Jalpaiguri to seek support.

They acted promptly. On December 10, 1973, they marched barefoot across the Teesta towards Jalpaiguri. They spent the night in the open at Raipur garden and sat for two whole days at the verandah of the Jalpaiguri court. Their slogan was, “Khoon paseena jiska, cha bagan uska” (‘our blood, our sweat, our tea garden’).

Finally the Deputy Commissioner emerged to say that the owner had not renewed the lease for the garden and hence the ownership of the garden technically would be transferred to government. The DM added that the workers could pluck leaves by themselves and sell them – the government would not stand in the way.

Also read: The Bitter Plight of Bengal’s Tea Garden Workers

Upon their return, the workers formed a committee to pluck and sell produce. The first to purchase from them were Duncan’s, at a meagre 60 paise per kilogram. The wages the committee could afford was a meagre 12 annas instead of the earlier Rs 3. The workers subsisted on roots, leaves, jackfruit, tea flower and whatever they could hunt from the adjacent wilderness – rats, rabbits, or fowl.

But they persisted.

In time they considered the possibility of building a cooperative in place of the committee. In the lead was Chinmay Ghosh of the CPI, workers’ leader Simon Oraon and Professor Sharit Bhawmik.

Additional Labour Commissioners N.C.Kundu and Ramkrishna Saha, along with District Magistrate Dilip Raut were all supportive. The assistant registrar of cooperative societies was a young man, N.K. Maity. The latter facilitated the district-level formalities and got the Cooperative Inspector to the garden for a general assembly to discuss the formation of the cooperative.

Chinmay Ghosh was the promoter and the assembly was presided by the badababu of the garden, Rebati Mohan Saha. By the end of the assembly, the workers unanimously passed the decision to constitute themselves as a cooperative. Thirty two of them signed on the document and submitted the application on August 10, 1974. And finally on September 4, 1974 they formed the cooperative under the ownership of the workers.

They chose not to use the earlier name. Thus the Saongaon Tea and Allied Plantation Workers Cooperative Society Limited was born. However, nationally, it would be forever known as the “Sonali cooperative”.


The share certificate of the Saongaon Tea & Allied Plantation Workers’ Co-operative Society Ltd. Photo: Rupam Deb

There were many challenges. To start with, how would the work be organised?

In the past there was a hierarchical system of manager, assistant manager, garden babu, munshi, dafadar, and under them the “coolies”. This was inherited from the British. But as soon as the cooperative was born in the hands of the workers, the morning whistle fell silent and so did the coarse orders of the dafadars. Workers started on their own, early in the morning. While the committee was preparing to transition into a cooperative, women workers had already decided on the division of labour and how the work would be organised. The decisions were passed on to the men to follow.

The owner had fled with all available vehicles, so they started with bullock carts and cycles. This soon picked pace, and the workers did not turn back. Leaving behind the ‘garden babu-garden sardar’ model, for the first time in independent India, both male and female workers were paid equal wages.


This was a couple of years before even the Union government made a legislation to that effect. Impressed at this effort, the All India Women’s Federation gifted 10,000 multivitamin tablets to the workers.

In the plucking season, a worker would usually get a 7 paise incentive for every extra kilogram above their usual work. The cooperative, however, gave 10 paise, and in some time raised it to 15 paise per kilogram – double the amount any other garden gave at the time.

While other gardens faltered even with the stipulated Rs 3 wage, the cooperative did not fail. It also gave, as per the Plantation Labour Act, umbrellas, aprons, sweaters, quilts and handkerchiefs. The cooperative members, it is said, even came to buy samples of umbrellas from Siliguri to take them back and let the workers decide which ones they would like. By then, the cooperative had acquired quite a bit of fame and the shop owner treated them with cold drinks and paan.

In 1975, the cooperative took a loan of Rs 40,000 and purchased a vehicle worth Rs 56,000. They also managed to invest in a tractor worth Rs 64,000. The workers themselves repaired the roads that had remained unattended for years.

In 1976, the cooperative planted on an extra 10 acres of land and took annual production to 10,43,000 kilogram by 1977. This was quite the leap from the 8,50,000 kilogram that the garden produced before.


Women workers of Sonali tea garden, Dooars. Photo: Sandip Saha.

But this was not enough for the Saongaon Cooperative. They started educating women workers and kicked off a cooperative milk production unit, along with plucking activities. In its functioning, the cooperative turned the privately owned tea garden model on its head.

Senior manager of adjacent Lakkhipara garden, one Greemer, arrived at the garden just to witness these momentous developments in Sonali. To his surprise he found that garden ran like clockwork even without any garden sardars. He told the garden leadership, “In my garden, absenteeism is a big issue. But I see it is not an issue here. If you give me a job here, I will happily come here and work.”

But this golden era did not last long.

The first attack descended upon the garden in the garb of legalities.

A case was registered by the United Bank of India against the garden over an outstanding loan. In 1976, the court passed a verdict in favour of UBI and ordered the garden owner, Khemka, to pay UBI Rs 2 lakhs.

But the garden management not only did not comply with the court’s orders but seeing the garden running smoothly under the cooperative society, attempted to take back the tea garden.

In 1977, UBI filed a case in the Calcutta high court, challenging the registration of the workers’ cooperative. With the support of the district administration the garden stayed at the hands of the workers from 1974 till July 9, 1978. The next day by a temporary order of the high court, a receiver, advocate Swapan Kumar Mullick who was also the lawyer of the Khemkas, was appointed at the garden.

The workers still believed that they would emerge victorious, given that a Left Front government had come to rule the state following the election in the previous year. But when the receiver entered the garden with the 10 truckloads of armed police, the so-called “workers’ party” which was now in power, looked the other way.


An ICDS centre in ruins at the Sonali tea garden. Photo: Rupam Deb

Swiftly, the garden was turned into a police camp and Section 144 was invoked. In 1976, there were several proposals floated by Cooperative Minister Atish Singh and the Cooperative Secretary, pleading for the cooperative to be allowed to pay back the loan amount to the bank slowly over the years. But those came to use, even under Left rule.

And so, cooperative leaders had to abscond for many years to avoid police. Meanwhile, the receiver appointed one Radheshyam Agarwal, a petrol pump owner from Malbazar, as agent to manage the garden’s affairs. The remaining members of the cooperative society tell this author that behind all of these anti-worker moves was Parimal Mitra, whose beginnings were as a working class leader and who was then the forest minister in the Left Front government.

The final order of the high court on September 13, 1978, went in favour of the workers’ cooperative. But it also gave the receiver a month in his role, within which time he approached the Supreme Court on the matter.


Supreme Court overturned the high court’s order on February 26, 1979, and gave three months to the receiver to continue in his position. Even after the receiver left, the agent Radheshyam stayed on with the former owner’s support and the tussle continued with the cooperative.

Right before the festive season in autumn, a small demonstration by workers led to a severe crackdown on the workers, involving police action with lathicharge, tear gas and bullets. Even though they were booked against bailable charges, bail was denied to the workers. Almost the whole of the cooperative board was put behind bars. Suspensions and retrenchments followed. Each worker had no fewer than seven to eight cases registered against him or her – milk theft, wood theft, tea leaf theft, death threats, dacoity. All were fictitious.

Shortly afterwards, the Supreme Court said that ownership of the land was disputed. The high court was ordered to resolve the case and asked the state government to take over the running of the garden till the matter was disposed.

The West Bengal Tea Development Corporation and its workers thus entered the garden and put in honest effort to bring it back to its feet. Workers once again started getting their wages and provident fund amounts regularly. But Radheshyam’s son Rajesh Agarwal continued in his attempts to usurp the garden, and reportedly was not above using muscle power.

Also read: Conversations in a Tea Garden Ahead of the West Bengal Elections

Cut to 2005, and once again, the high court removed the WBTDC and appointed two receivers, who handed over charge to Rajesh Agarwal. Aided by the state government’s apathy and the exhausting length of judicial procedure, the final verdict came in 2007. The management of the garden was passed to Rajesh Agarwal, ending what was once a strong example of labour power.

On November 22, 2014, after not having been paid wages for three months, angry garden workers allegedly brutally murdered Rajesh Agarwal in front of the garden office.

The garden was shut for two years and finally reopened in the hands of a new Siliguri-based owner. At present, workers receive Rs 193 daily instead of the stipulated Rs 202. In several sections, tea plants have been uprooted and sold off. In 2018, through an RTI, this author got to know that the owners have the lease till 2035. The rent and cess value, payable to the West Bengal government, amounts to Rs 6,21,128. Outstanding lease amounts to nearly Rs 15 lakhs.


Mattu Oraon with a picture of the late Simon Oraon. Photo: Rupam Deb

Only three of the erstwhile members of the original cooperative are alive now. One of them is the then vice-chairman of the Cooperative, Mattu Oraon. Remembering another prominent leader of the cooperative, Simon Oroan, he said, “At the time, CPIM leaders would say that if workers become owners themselves, how will class struggle be sharpened? Actually, they did not want this plan to succeed as a successful cooperative would have inspired similar models across the Dooars.”


Mattu Oraon said that the most influenced would have been the adjacent Rupali garden which was under CPIM leader Parimal Mitra’s influence. “But for as long as the crisis in the gardens continue, the relevance and significance of the Sonali struggle will stay alive.”

Rupam Deb is a ground activist and student based in north Bengal.

CLASS WAR 

When History is Held Hostage: Commemorating the Continuing Sufferings of the Mappila Martyrs of 1921

While religion had a part to play in the rebellion, the movement in fact registered the resistance of the rural poor to acts of oppression and exploitation perpetrated by feudal landlords and the British colonial state.

Mappila rebels captured after a battle with British colonial troops in 1921. 

Photo: Unknown author/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

Muhammed Niyas Ashraf
03/SEP/2021

When, in the last week of August, the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) decided to remove the names of 387 Mappila martyrs from the list of honour in the Dictionary of Martyrs of India’s Freedom Struggle, 1857-1947, it was not the first time that the Mappila uprising of 1921, popularly known as the Malabar rebellion, had grabbed the headlines of the national dailies and became a politically contested and polarising event.

The ICHR’s announcement in fact was the culmination of years of controversy sparked by right-wing activists who maintain that the Mappila uprising had not been an anti-colonial rebellion at all, but had aimed instead to establish an Islamic state in India.

While it is true that religion had a part to play in the 1921 rebellion, the causes of the Mappila outbreaks (there had been as many as 35 serious ones between 1849 and 1921) were far more profound and predominantly agrarian in nature. This movement, in fact, registered the protest and resistance of the rural poor to acts of oppression and exploitation perpetrated by feudal landlords and the British colonial state, which was why the 387 martyrs of the rebellion were included in the dictionary in the first place. To remove them from the list would be to reduce the event to the level of a large-scale communal riot – as had served the divide and rule purpose of the colonial British government in India at that time.

The Dictionary of Martyrs

The main objective of the Dictionary of Martyrs of India’s Freedom Struggle, 1857-1947, in which the professional historians associated with the ICHR and the Union Ministry of Culture have identified and listed 14,000 martyrs of the anti-colonial struggle between 1857 and 1947, is to bring to the attention of the wider Indian public the unsung heroes who decided to accept suffering and possibly death for the larger cause of Indian independence.

In his editor’s note for Volume IV of the dictionary, Arvind P. Jamkhedkar, the present chairperson of the ICHR, wrote:

“Our objective in the project has always been to try as best as we can in covering martyrs belonging to all the categories of Indian society, and to bring into focus not only the known, but also the barely known, the obscure and the forgotten (especially from the lower rungs of society), and enlist them into liberated India’s roll of honour.”

Thus, the five volumes of the dictionary indicate precise sources of historical data to establish their authenticity. Each entry provides a brief biographical history of the martyr concerned, based to the extent possible on authentic archival and other contemporary documents. Each entry tries to show that the martyr’s decision was made explicitly rather than impulsively and that the martyr fully understood the gravity of the consequences of her or his actions. By accepting suffering, the martyr could not act aggressively or respond to aggression, but was ready and willing to die for a set of ideological or political beliefs.

The recording of the martyrs’ sufferings and deaths is meant to become part of the country’s collective memory and give meaning to the past. The primary sources that each entry depends on are the dynamics of the authority and authenticity that govern this memory work. The methodology followed by the research assistants in this project builds a relationship between knowledge built upon collective memory and historical experience. The Dictionary of Martyrs has included as many names as possible of people who participated in various movements, organisations, and incidents during the Indian independence movement.

The project had been initiated in 2007 by the national implementation committee in charge of organising celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the 1857 uprising and 60 years of India’s independence, which had wanted a compilation of a ‘national register of martyrs’. The ICHR accepted the project and necessary funds at the request of the Union Ministry of Culture and the advisory committee, comprising historians and representatives of the Union Ministry of Culture and the National Archives of India, decided that the project would produce a series of volumes entitled Dictionary of Martyrs of India’s Freedom Struggle, 1857-1947.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi releasing a volume of the ‘Dictionary of Martyrs of India’s Freedom Struggle, 1857-1947’ in March 2019. Photo: narendramodi.in

The committee also accepted for the purpose of this project the definition of the term ‘martyr’ that the Government of India had adopted in 1980 to facilitate the distribution of awards and pensions. A martyr, according to this definition, is a person who died or was killed in action or detention or was awarded capital punishment while participating in a national movement for India’s emancipation, including ex-Indian National Army or ex-military personnel who died fighting the British.

The search for sources

Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, a prominent historian at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi from 1976 to 2003, and the author of significant historical monographs, was the then chairperson of the ICHR. He showed the gaps that existed in the biographical dictionaries of martyrs that had been published on the occasion of the Mahatma Gandhi centenary celebrations by the Union Ministry of Education. This compilation of the Who’s Who of Indian Martyrs published in 1969, 1972 and 1973 under the editorship of Dr P.N. Chopra defined the term ‘martyr’ as a patriot who was hanged or killed in the struggle for freedom.

Gaps also existed in the biographical dictionaries or lists of martyrs published by state governments to commemorate events in the freedom struggle. For example, in 1975, Karunakaran Nair edited a 625-page monograph titled Who is Who of Freedom Fighters in Kerala. Most of these publications lacked authenticity because of the absence of primary sources relating to the martyr’s contribution to or sacrifices for the freedom movement.

The ICHR’s Dictionary of Martyrs of India’s Freedom Struggle, 1857-1947, on the other hand, utilises primary sources such as archival and other contemporary documents, which are listed at the end of each biographical note as references.

Considering the massive extent of the project, after the publication of Volume I, Part 1, Bhattacharya and the central advisory committee decided to engage a research consultant for the project, Professor Amit Kumar Gupta (who passed away in July 2021), a leading historian who documented various episodes of peasant resistances and various freedom movements in his books, 2015’s Nineteenth-Century Colonialism and the Great Indian Revolt and The Agrarian Drama: The Leftists and the Rural Poor in India, 1934-1951, published in 1996. His vast experience and ability to guide the research proved invaluable. He asked the research team to strictly follow the historical methodology of carefully reading primary sources to obtain sufficient details on every historical movement.

To write about the martyrs and to authenticate their martyrdom from primary sources (including archival documents, official and non-official), the research team, including myself, undertook various trips to different state archives over and above its regular visits to the National Archives of India and the Nehru Memorial Library and Museum, New Delhi.

For the entries from Kerala, the research team visited the Tamil Nadu State Archives in Chennai, the Calicut State Archives and the Thiruvananthapuram State Archives to gather the information necessary for establishing identities, viz. name, date of birth or age at the time of martyrdom, place of birth or residence. Since caste identities feature in almost all 19th century records, this is also included in the entries on the martyrs. All these data are followed by a summary of the available information on the individual’s participation in the freedom struggle and the course of events leading to her or his death or martyrdom. Scholars can thus follow up the references to the archival data.

While doing the archival work for the martyrs from Kerala, especially to identify the martyrs of the Mappila outbreaks between 1849 and 1921 and the Punnapra-Vayalar movement of 1946, the research team studied a variety of primary sources. These included the fortnightly reports sent by the colonial officials or collector of Malabar to the governor-general of British India or his imperial agents in then Madras, generally about local conflicts; the political and foreign files of the home department; the proceedings of the judicial department, consisting of records related to criminal trials and judicial decisions in matters before a particular court or details of a sentenced prisoner and his death; and native newspaper reports consisting of weekly typewritten abstracts taken from a wide variety of Indian newspapers with some extracts translated by an official translator divided into foreign politics, home administration, police, working of the courts, jails and so on, from the Tamil Nadu State Archives.

26th September 1925: Mappila prisoners go to trial at Calicut on the Malabar Coast in India’s south-western state of Kerala, charged with agitation against British Rule in India. 

Photo: Topical Press Agency/Wikimedia Commons

The research team also consulted the Proceedings of the Home Political Department files from the National Archives of India, the Malabar Collectorate Records, police files, political (home) files from the Kerala State Archives in Kozhikode and freedom movement files in the Kerala State Archives in Thiruvananthapuram. Most of Kerala’s entries in the Dictionary of Martyrs are based on primary sources, allowing those who are not satisfied with the brief biographical notes in the volumes of the project to gather more information.


Moreover, before the publication of each volume of the Dictionary of Martyrs, two experts undertook the arduous task of reading it meticulously, suggesting improvements and adding a few more names. The research team also consulted secondary sources to cross-check and authenticate the data regarding primary sources whenever possible. For example, here is an entry from Volume V of the Dictionary of Martyrs:

Appankollan Moideen: Resident of Pandikadamsom, taluk Ernad, Malabar, Kerala. He was involved in an armed confrontation in his village with the British during the Malabar rebellion of 1921-22 and coinciding with the Khilafat and Non-Cooperation movement. In the ensuing clash between the fully armed 2/8th Gurkha Rifles and the scarcely armed 2000 Mappila rebels on 14 November 1921 in Pandikad, about 234 unyielding Mappilas were believed, by the Colonel Commandant, to have perished. Moideen was one among those who died on the 14 November 1921 firing by the British troops. [H/ Poll, 1921, F. No. 241, Part 1-A, NAI; PPRM (K.N Panikkar (ed), Peasants Protest and Revolts in Malabar), pp. 372-74].

More than 500 martyrs from Kerala were included in the dictionary by Professor Shobhanan of the history department, University of Kerala, the regional coordinator from Kerala in the initial stage of the dictionary, together with the research team I was part of. We focused on the obscured, the undiscovered and the forgotten (especially from the lower strata of society) in the annals of India’s freedom struggle and thus each martyr’s inscribed transmission and sufferings has become a memorial, conveyed and sustained through this dictionary, enhancing the nation’s collective memory.

Possibilities of controversy

In the editor’s note in the introductory volume of the Dictionary of Martyrs, Bhattacharya informed the readers that various research details may lead to controversies. He wrote:

“The question of inclusion or exclusion of some individuals may itself be a subject of controversy. Our decision was to make this compilation as inclusive as possible. Moreover, the primary sources we have depended upon may contain errors of facts or interpretation; the inherent bias in the British Indian government’s records is too obvious a thing to elaborate upon. In this collection of data, an effort has been made to overcome such data limitations.”

With all these risks in mind, the research team consulted archival sources in several regional archives across India and scrutinised thousands of files relating to the participants and proceedings of various anti-colonial and anti-feudal movements that had not previously been explored or consulted on a larger scale to identify as many of those as possible who gave up their lives in the widespread popular struggle between 1857 and 1947 to win the country’s freedom. The martyrs in the dictionary have all participated in an anti-colonial movement or social protest even if these were of a purely local or sectional nature, taking place within the narrow grooves of the collective self-awareness of a tribe, caste, or religious sect. This voluminous research has provided a comprehensive view of the nation-formation movement, particularly the development of the national freedom movement and the regional variations that allowed the independence struggle to be mobilised for further emotional integration, unity, and political advantages.

The pan-Indian work that went into the dictionary shows how India’s plural society advanced against the imperialist assertion in ways that carried a national consciousness. In this endeavour, the research team telescopically covered the ubiquitous participation of almost all the segments of Indian society in the freedom movement.

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The sufferings of unknown martyrs in jails, especially with diseases and police brutality, were given ample consideration in the dictionary. For example, in volume V:

Ammankallan Viran Kutty: Resident of Iruveethiamsom, distt. Malappuram, Kerala, he was taken into custody in connection with the Malabar rebellion of 1921 against the combination of the British colonial authorities and the exploitative Jenmis, and coinciding with the Khilafat and Non-Cooperation movement. He was detained on 5 May 1922 as an under-trial prisoner and kept in the Manjeri Sub-Jail. Together with brutal police tortures, and a serious attack of pneumonia in the jail (due to very bad sanitary conditions, overcrowding and insufficiency of clean water and food), Viran Kutty died on 25 May 1922 in detention at the age of 30. [Pub Deptt, G.O. (MS) No. 960, 20.11.1922, TNSAC].

Limited perspectives

Despite the laborious work put in by the research team, right-wing activists have attempted to reduce the public perspective of the Mappila Uprisings of 1921-22 into the limited viewpoint of religion.

In September 2020, when a Malayalam film project on Variyankunnathu Kunjahammed Haji, a prominent Mappila leader who led the outbreak, was announced, right-wing groups announced that they would oppose the endeavours to eulogise Haji and the uprising with a year-long campaign to expose the rebellion’s ‘anti-Hindu’ aspects.

Two years earlier, the Indian Railways was forced to remove a painting of the 1921 Mappila uprising from Tirur station in Kerala when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) protested against it.

This August, the Union Ministry of Culture withdrew the fifth volume of the Dictionary of Martyrs after right-wing groups, including the Hindu Aikya Vedi (a Kerala-based organisation), alleged that the aim of the Malabar Rebellion was the establishment of an ‘Islamic state’ and demanded the withdrawal of the entries covering the rebellion’s leaders, Variyankunnathu Kunjahammad Haji and Ali Musliyar, from the martyrs’ dictionary. A.P. Abdullahkutty, the national vice president of the BJP, said that Variyankunnathu Haji had been the ‘first head of the Taliban in Kerala’ and referred to the 1921 anti-colonial Mappila uprisings as the ‘Moplah Massacre’. Similarly, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh ideologue Ram Madhav called this anti-colonial movement ‘the first manifestation of the Taliban mindset’ in Kerala and Kummanam Rajasekharan, the former state president of the BJP, said that the rebellion had been a campaign of jihād that had murdered thousands of Hindus, sexually abused Hindu women and desecrated Hindu temples.

At the same time, following the argument of the Muslim reformer Makti Tangal (1847-1912), who, according to an unpublished University of Delhi thesis by Muhammed Niyas Ashraf titled Islamic Modernity and Reform in Colonial Kerala: Reading Makti Taṅṅaḷ, had criticised the 19th century Mappila outbreaks as being detrimental to Muslim educational progress, the Samastha Kerala Jam-Iyyathul Ulema, a body of Muslim Sunni scholars in Kerala, denounced the Mappila uprising during the centenary celebrations of the 1921 revolt as a feckless effort that pushed back the Muslim community by 100 years.

Such hesitancy to consider the heroic efforts of the Mappilas in the country’s freedom struggle coupled with critical statements and writings that demonise a particular Muslim community largely serve the purpose of colonialists who worked hard to divide Indians based on religion and caste. This debate on martyrs, the status of their martyrdom and the mistrust of their religious identity that we are now witnessing is not an attempt to politicise history but instead an attempt to make history hostage to agenda-driven politics.

However, in the wake of the centenary celebration of the 1921 Mappila uprising in 2021, this controversy can and should influence historians and social scientists to study the manifold nature of the movement and the sacrifices made by the Mappila freedom fighters and bring this information into the public sphere. Rather than research the 1921 uprising as the culmination of a few events, emerging academics and intellectuals can situate the Mappila uprising not only in the broader canvas of the freedom struggle, especially the non-cooperation and Khilafat movements which were the pivotal motif of 1921, but with multi-layered narratives from subaltern histories with manifold manifestations. We can locate such layered stories and multiple strands in a few post-colonial scholarships from different schools of historical thought, such as those by Conrad Wood, Robert Hardgrave, D.N. Dhanagare, Ranajit Guha, K.N. Panikkar, Gangadhara Menon and M.T. Ansari, that view the revolt as an anti-colonial uprising and challenge the simplistic narrations that depict the 1921 revolt as a widespread communal riot.

The 1921 Mappila Uprising

In itself, the pathetic condition of the poverty-stricken cultivator of south Malabar was a direct provocation for the 35 Mappila outbreaks that took place between 1849 and 1921. Even the British administrators of Malabar, such as William Logan, the Malabar collector, in 1884 and C.A. Innés, a settlement officer in Malabar, in 1913, had realised the growing dangers of agrarian trouble and had strongly urged the adoption of land reforms. But nothing had been done to improve the situation. Therefore, it is not surprising that as late as 1919, disorders in Malabar were being sparked off by agrarian disputes, according to a news report published in The Hindu of February 13, 1919.

The uprising of 1921-22 was no exception.The contemporary opinion, especially found in colonial records such as the legislative assembly debates, India Office records and private papers, almost shyly admitted that the convulsion was due to the agrarian grievances of tenant farmers against the janmis or landlords. Even the viceroy of India, Lord Reading, who believed that the Khilafat propaganda of the time was the leading cause of the ‘rebellion’, considered agrarian discontent as a ‘predisposing factor’ and opened a correspondence with the governor of Madras, Lord Willingdon, to examine the question of tenancy law reform which he thought was desirable in the interest of the future peace of Malabar.

“We have in regard to Malabar,” Reading wrote to Willingdon in a letter maintained in the India Office Records, “to aim not merely the restoration of order but also at the conversion of the Moplahs into peaceful and loyal citizens, and it may be that agrarian reform would be a powerful influence in this direction.”

It is fair to argue that if the outbreak had not been agrarian in nature, the Mappilas from the comparatively better-off parts of Malabar would not have remained aloof or sided with the government. In his pathbreaking work Against Lord and State, K.N. Panikkar writes: “Peasantry in Malabar lived and worked in conditions of extreme penury entailed by the twin exactions of the lord and the State.”

But though the agrarian grievances were the underlying factor, other contributory causes had combined to produce the eruption: a perceived threat to Islam, inflammatory newspaper reports, provocation by government officials and police were all factors, but the Khilafat and non-cooperation movements acted as a catalyst, according to The Moplah Rebellion of 1921-22 and Its Genesis, the published PhD thesis of historian Conrad Wood.

As with previous occasions of Mappila outbreaks, an attempt was made by the colonial narratives and post-colonial Western scholarships to present the 1921-22 rebellion as a violent expression of pure religious fanaticism; an organised Khilafat-Congress rebellion ‘to upset the British Raj’ and essentially an anti- Hindu outbreak, as seen in reports in the Madras Mail of August 22 and 30, 1921, and memos between Willingdon, the governor of Madras and Edwin Montagu, the secretary of state for India and Burma. Agrarian discontent was simply dismissed as a ‘myth’, according to John J. Banninga in his despatch, The Moplah Rebellion of 1921, published in the October 1923 edition of The Moslem World. However, recent subaltern scholarship’s deeper acquaintance with the subject shows that religion was only a channel through which the discontent found an escape.

The outbreak was the manifestation of deliberate political action within the ambit of the Khilafat-non-cooperation propaganda that heightened the religious feelings of the Mappilas, who were naturally drawn into the agitation. The Mappilas began to be attracted to the Khilafat movement in April 1920 after a conference at Manjeri, according to Robert L. Hardgrave Jr in his The Mappila Rebellion, 1921: Peasant Revolt in Malabar, and by June, a Khilafat committee had started directing the action in Malabar. By the following year, nearly 200 committees were working under both Muslim and Hindu leaders. Then in September, Shaukat Ali, accompanied by Mahatma Gandhi, descended on Malabar on a propaganda tour, according to Banninga.

Gandhi viewed the Khilafat as an ‘opportunity of uniting Hindu and Muslim as would not arise in hundred years’. When the Khilafat question was discussed in a joint conference of Hindus and Muslims on September 24, 1920, Gandhi attended and chaired the meeting. He advocated non-cooperation to redress Khilafat grievances, agrarian discontent and economic issues in Malabar, which meant that the arbitrary exactions of the Hindu ‘upper caste’ landlords and the oppressive government increases in the land tax were exploited in this meeting along with religious grievances.

When the Congress-Khilafat leadership stated in two public meetings that it was their spiritual and national duty to fight against British imperialism, the Mappilas were motivated to participate in the movement, according to R.H. Hitchcock in A History of the Malabar Rebellion, 1921, which was published in 1925. M.P. Narayana Menon, a prominent Khilafat leader who was later tried for his part in the outbreak, was reported in the Madras Mail of July 28, 1922, to have declared at a meeting: “The British Government is at an end, the British Government has no troops. If the Moplahs remain united, they can easily overthrow the present Government and establish a Khilafat rule instead; all should be prepared to sacrifice their lives for the Khilafat cause.”

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By the end of 1920, the Khilafat organisation and the non-cooperation movement were widely spread in Malabar and attracted Muslims in large numbers. In midsummer came the fateful resolutions of the all-India Khilafat Conference at Karachi proposing the establishment of an Indian republic, which gave the Mappilas the belief that the end of the British Raj was at hand, according to C. Gopalan Nair in The Moplah Rebellion, 1921, which was published in 1923. The sparks that kindled the flame of the Mappila uprising were provided by several other Mappila Khilafatists on August 20, 1921, according to Hitchcock, with the attempt of the colonial government to arrest some Khilafat leaders at Tirurangadi, including Ali Musliyar (1861-1922) against whom the authorities seemed to hold a grudge, the torture and humiliations of several Mappila families, the assault of the police on those who wore Gandhi caps at Tirurangadi, the dishonour of the Khilafat flags and the persecution of Khilafat workers, according to G.R.F. Tottenham in The Mapilla Rebellion, 1921-22, which was published in 1922.

The Tirurangadi arrests, coming as they did after prolonged and grave police provocations, let loose the pent-up Mappila feelings and sporadic violence began to take place in the taluks of Ernad, Walluvanad, and Ponnani, fully supported by the Khilafat movement. Gangadhara Menon, referring to the mutual dependence of the Khilafat and tenancy movements in Malabar in his 1989 book Malabar Rebellion (1921-22), noted that “Most tenants in Taluks of Emad and Walluvanad being Mappilas, the tenants’ agitation was animated by the Khilafat spirit.”

The fury of the Mappilas was first directed against European and Indian officials and Hindu janmis and money-lenders who they identified as their oppressors. It then turned on ‘upper caste’ Hindus in general as reprisals for betraying their cause and assisting the authorities in suppressing the ‘rebellion’. Besides, the majority of the police force was Hindu and the oppression to which the Mappilas had been subjected naturally turned them against the policemen’s co-religionists. Mappila loyalists of the government also became frequent targets. The rioters attacked the military and the police, burnt and looted government and private property, pillaged Manas and Kovilagams (‘upper caste’ households), destroyed revenue records and obstructed communications, according to the parliament papers of 1921. They brought the civil administration to a virtual standstill.

The uprising began on August 20, 1921, and lasted for six months. It took a further six months to establish peace and order in the areas of rebellion. The Mappilas ran an indigenous government of their own and kept up the spirit of revolt among Muslim peasants for a much longer period than anyone thought they could. The government suppressed the ‘rebellion’ with the help of Gurkha troops and the imposition of martial law, according to a report in the Madras Mail of March 23, 1923, that lasted for six months until the outbreak finally collapsed with the capture and execution on January 6, 1922, of Variyankunnathu Kunjahammed Haji, although the last of the leaders, according to Hitchcock, was not captured until towards the end of August 1922. This was the most serious rebellion that the British had had to face since the 1857 struggle for freedom.

According to official sources including memos between the secretary of state and the viceroy, the final death toll of the 1921 uprising was 2,337 rebels killed, 1,652 wounded, and 45,404 imprisoned. Unofficial sources put the figures at about 10,000 dead with 252 executions, 50,000 imprisoned, 20,000 exiled and 10,000 missing, along with hundreds of deaths in police confinement and losses in armed skirmishes, according to Roland E. Miller in his 1976 book, Mappila Muslims of Kerala: A Study in Islamic Trends.

Especially brutal was the transportation of Mappila prisoners in goods trains. On one occasion detailed in memos between the secretary of state and the viceroy, 64 out of 100 prisoners died through asphyxiation, heat, and exhaustion in an ill-ventilated 18x 9 x 7.5 feet wagon. Later on, according to the legislative assembly debates of 1923, the British state updated the mortality during the outbreak as 2,339 Mappilas’ deaths, 1,652 wounded, 5,955 captured and 39,348 surrendered to the military or the police. The number of prisoners in jails in April 1923 was 45,404 and 7,900 rebels were sent to the islands of the Andamans.These 7,900 were largely ignored in the popular memory of the Indian freedom struggle.

Most of those who lost their lives in this struggle are unknown Mappilas. Hence, the main objective of the biographical entries on the Mappila martyrs in the fifth volume of the Dictionary of Martyrs was to bring to the attention of the wider Indian public the lesser-known Mappila martyrs.

Threats to historical discipline

The inclusion of the Mappila martyrs of 1921 in the Dictionary of Martyrs was an attempt to present the voices of unknown martyrs to the general Indian public. The religion or other identities of the martyrs were never the focus. These biographical entries mention the contributions of the martyrs and record their struggle without associating them with any ideology or political agendas. The primary motive of the dictionary is to demonstrate the sacrifice and sufferings of local, subaltern, and unknown martyrs by indicating that each martyr had her or his own agency in delivering her or his sacrifice to the Indian public.

Historians and social scientists have shown that the word ‘martyrdom’ has powerful emotional, political and social connotations. While we can’t ignore the fact that any account of martyrdom during the freedom movement is bound to be selective, should the thousands of Mappilas killed during the Indian independence movement be described as heroes or martyrs or both?

In questioning martyrdom, we ask: who is a martyr? For some, martyrs and martyrdom are objective empirical realities that can be studied in isolation. For others, they are primarily created by later communities and entirely dependent on the socio-political context of their deaths, especially in the evaluation of the circumstances in which they sacrificed their lives and how they became some significant memories of the community.

However, the current controversies regarding the Mappila martyrs display the threats that both martyrs and historical discipline face from a kind of politics that stands closer to the colonial government than to the freedom movement. Erasing any of these martyrs and their sufferings and experiences in the anti-colonial/anti-feudal movement, agrarian discontent and police brutality would result in an incomplete, biased portrayal of the event with the possibility of historical distortions. Moreover, a singular Hindu victimhood narrative is futile, but critical and multiple histories of the uprisings are compelling and expected to be accomplished with scholarly engagement.


Muhammed Niyas Ashraf was the research/editorial assistant (2014-15) in the Indian Council of Historical Research project Dictionary of Martyrs of India’s Freedom Struggle, 1857-1947, who collected and compiled the list of Mappila Martyrs in Volume V. He is now a doctoral fellow at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.

Full Text: Rana Banerji on How Pakistan Propped Up, Funded and Sustained the Taliban

The retired special secretary in the Cabinet Secretariat incharge of RAW, covers the Taliban's history and the people who run it.

File photo of Taliban militants. Photo: Reuters

Karan Thapar
28/AUG/2021

On August 27, The Wire carried a video interview of Rana Banerji, retired special secretary in the Cabinet Secretariat incharge of RAW, by Karan Thapar. In this comprehensive interview of 45 minutes, Banerji sheds light on how Taliban came to be what it is today from its formative years, and how Pakistan has aided its rise for its own strategic purposes.

Banerji, based on his nuanced reading and observation, covers a broad sweep of the Taliban’s history and the people who run it. His insights offer a useful framework to strategically predict how the Taliban would operate in the days to come, now that they have seized power in Afghanistan.

Below is the full transcript of the interview. It has been edited lightly in places. Watch the full interview 



Karan Thapar: Hello and welcome to a special interview for The Wire. The speed and the drama with which Kabul collapsed on the fifteenth of August has raised two fundamental questions that as yet have not been answered: What exactly was Pakistan’s role, and what do we know about the personalities and factions that make up the Taliban. My guest today is perhaps one of the few people in the country who has answers to these critical questions. The retired special secretary in the Cabinet Secretariat incharge of RAW. He’s Rana Banerji.


Mr. Banerji, let me start with a simple question, and then we’ll build from there. Everyone knows that Pakistan’s ISI has played a critical role in funding and also in militarily assisting the Taliban. Most people believe that Pakistan also played a role in creating the Taliban. The problem is no one has precise details. So can you begin by giving people an idea of the sort of concrete help the ISI gave the Taliban in these three critical respects?

Rana Banerji: Thank you, first of all, Karan for having me on your show. The Taliban actually came into existence in the autumn of 1994 in a mosque known as the White Mosque. It’s about 50 kilometres from Kandahar. And it was a set of religious devotees who decided to stop certain criminal extortionist gangs which were operating on the highways and harassing a lot of innocent people. There were cases of kidnapping, rape, extortion of goods. So this was effectively stopped by Mullah Omar’s gang. Mullah Omar was authorised as the commander of Maulana Abdul Samad who was technically the first emir of what later became the Taliban. So they started operating and were fairly successful.


KT: So at this stage, the Taliban was the creation of Afghan people themselves in Kandahar. There was Pakistani involvement in the creation of the Taliban.

RB: That’s right. In fact, when Pakistanis heard about it, there was an official convoy of the Pakistani government, consignment of trucks, which had been halted by a similar gang. And General Naseerullah Babar, who was interior minister of the Benazir government then, he decided to take their help and was able to succeed in getting this help. Out of gratitude then, they decided to give Mullah Omar a further bigger role, to expand his influence northwards towards Kabul and also eastwards, which was encouraged also by the then Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani.

KT: So the Pakistan connection with Taliban began as a result of a fortuitous event. Pakistani trucks were held up, they wanted to be cleared, they used Mullah Omar and his people to clear it, and in gratitude, they began the relationship.

RB: Yes. They made available a cache of arms which were hidden in tunnels near Kandahar, which had been intended for use against the Russian invaders. So this was given to Mullah Omar. And also he got money from President Rabbani according to a well-known Pakistani author.

KT: Why did he get money from Rabbani?

RB: To discipline Hekmatyar, who was nettling Rabbani too much. And Rabbani was dependent for survival on Ahmad Shah Massoud who was his defence minister. So the whole thing was cracking up already in Kabul.

KT: So in its early days, the Taliban was getting support from Pakistan through Naseerullah Babar (Pakistan’s interior minister) but it also was getting funding from the Afghan government of the day, which is Rabbani’s government, or Rabbani himself.

RB: There was a report that there was initial funding of three million dollars, of which the Taliban, Mullah Omar’s group, got only two million. One million was kept away by an intermediary.

KT: But the interesting thing is that in the beginning days, the early days of the Taliban, it was funded both by Pakistan and by Rabbani. And Rabbani was by the way the head of the old Northern Alliance. And Massoud was his defence minister.

RB: That’s right. So thereafter the ISI help can be seen in three or four phases. The Taliban, or Mullah Omar had come across Colonel Sultan Amir Tarar, who was a former army officer, trained by the Americans and also a member of the Pakistani special services group. After retirement, he had become the Consul General of Herat. He was roped in to guide and train the Taliban…

KT: By the Pakistanis?

RB: By the Pakistanis. And the entire military training was given by Colonel Sultan Amir Tarar who got the mystical name of ‘Imam’.


KT: So Colonel Tarar actually did give military training of a pretty formal sort?

RB: Yes. Absolutely. And then there was funding continuously by the ISI because they felt in the first phase that they would be able to install the Taliban with some popular support in governance in Kabul. And this is the phase ‘94 to ‘96.

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KT: When did the Pakistanis move from simply being grateful to the Taliban and militarily training them, and then beginning to think that maybe they could create a government out of Taliban. How long did that take?

RB: A few months only. 1994 to 1995 I would think. And then 1996, the Taliban were ready to move into Kabul. And they were funded and they were assisted militarily with convoys, with actual special services men in commoner garb accompanying their motorcycles and jeeps when they moved into Kabul.

KT: So when the Taliban actually first in 1996 began their campaign to go straight to Kabul, they were funded by the Pakistanis, they were given equipment by the Pakistanis, they were given, I presume, weapons as well.

RB: Yes. And by that time the ISI had lost faith in Hekmatyar who was their earlier protégé. Because Hekmatyar was not able to fight sufficiently well.

KT: And the Taliban now got the Pakistan backing instead.

RB: Yes, yes.

KT: And Pakistan, therefore, in a sense could have, you could say, funded, militarily trained the Taliban conquest in the 1996 period of Kabul.

RB: Yes. And then we come to the second phase, where the actual governance of Taliban was also assisted by Pakistanis in a very big way. Officers, plain clothes assistants, bureaucrats, they all went there and helped the Taliban to consolidate normal bureaucratic governance.

KT: So there were Pakistani officers and bureaucrats actually sitting in Kabul from 1996 to 2001 during the five years that the Taliban was ruling.

RB: Yes. Not only in Kabul but in the outlying provinces. And when 9/11 happened and the Americans decided to bomb the hell out of Taliban and the governance system there, there was the infamous Kunduz airlift, where almost thousand to two thousand – the number varies – Pakistani officials, both serving army officers as well as civilian bureaucrats, had to be airlifted out in sorties by the Pakistani air force, in the knowledge of the American move.

KT: Absolutely. I remember that period very clearly. We saw pictures on television of Pakistani soldiers now dressed in civilian clothes actually being airlifted out of Kunduz.

RB: That’s right.

KT: In other words, for the five years of Taliban rule, from 1996 to 2001, much of the military spine, much of the administrative spine were supplied by Pakistan.


RB: That’s right.

KT: So you could say that not only did Pakistan finance the first “conquest” of Kabul by the Taliban in ‘96, but then they in a sense provided the backbone for the government.

RB: Certainly.

KT: So the Taliban could not have ruled for that five year period without all the help and support they got from Pakistan.

RB: That’s right. And of course there were figurehead leaders, religious leaders, who were put in positions as defence minister or any other minister. So there was a shura which actually was seen to be governing the country.

KT: But the real governance was Pakistani officials?

RB: Well they also learned their ropes, the Taliban leaders.

KT: But the Pakistanis were there behind closed doors.

RB: Yes. To guide them, yes.

KT: Tell me, what sort of support did the Pakistanis give the Taliban from 2001, when they were thrown out by the Americans from Kabul, right up till 2021.

RB: Again, this has to be seen in three phases, if I may put it. The first phase was the withdrawal phase, when they were determined to save as many assets of theirs and ask them to lie low and settle down in various places in Pakistan. And these were the places which were not so much in the limelight, the federally administered tribal areas, from where the Miran Shah Shura took shape. And then there were the Peshawar refugee camps, where the Peshawar Shura of the Taliban was set up. And then there were outskirts of Quetta, there was another refugee camp there were the Quetta Shura was set up.

KT: So in each of these three instances the Pakistan government found sanctuaries and helped the Taliban settle there and create a second life for themselves now that they’ve been thrown out of Kabul.

RB: In this work, also they helped the escape of Osama bin Laden, first from Kandahar to Tora Bora caves, and from Tora Bora into Pakistan. And in this transition, Jalaluddin Haqqani, the Haqqani network head or tribal chief, came to their assistance in a major way. And Jalaluddin Haqqani, many people forget, was also an American asset, acknowledged to be a CIA asset earlier.

KT: And he just changed sides?

RB: No he remained with the Americans.

KT: So he was a double agent in a sense.


RB: Yes.

KT: Fascinating. Tell me something, in the first phase after 2001, the Pakistani found sanctuaries and helped the Taliban settle in Miran Shah, in Quetta, in Peshawar. What did they do in the second stage and the third stage?

RB: In the second stage you see Musharraf had come to power and the double dealing with the Americans started in real earnest. There were also a lot of Arabs, Uzbeks, Chechen rebels, Tajik islamic rebel outfits which had come along with Osama bin Laden. And Ayman al-Zawahiri. And Jalaluddin Haqqani himself had an Arab wife apart from his Afghan wife. One of his sons, Nasir, who was later killed, was in charge of handling all the funds, the hawala funds which used to come from…

KT: So you’re saying in the second stage the Pakistanis provided protection not just to the Taliban but to this collection of Uzbek, Arab, Tajik militants and jihadis who had come across with Taliban.

RB: Yes. That’s right. And that is when also the phenomenon of the Tehrik-i-Taliban developed particularly in the FATA, the tribal areas which were ruled at the time by the frontier crimes…

KT: But this should have worried the Pakistanis.

RB: Sorry?

KT: This should have worried the Pakistanis, that the Taliban from Afghanistan were now, under their protection, creating a Tehrik-i-Taliban in Pakistan.

RB: It didn’t worry them initially because they felt they had everything under their control…

KT: Which they didn’t eventually.

RB: Which they didn’t eventually because in the process of what happened, the Maliki system — which stood from the British time, where there used to a tribal elder as the Malik in the area and he was assisted by a civil servant who was designated a political agent in these areas — their reich stopped running. And it was the Maulanas and the well-funded clerics in these areas who became more power brokers. They had guns and they started to—

KT: Now the first stage you’ve established is when Pakistan found sanctuaries and settled the Taliban in Quetta, in Miran Shah, and in Peshawar. What sort of financing did they give them thereafter? What sort of facilities or military training did they give them? What sort of protection? Can you tell me about that quickly?

RB: Well there aren’t too many details about the funding, how it went, but one thing is for certain, the drug smuggling from these areas, both by the land route through Karachi and also by the land route into Iran and then into Western Europe, was manipulated by the Taliban to collect funds on their own.

KT: But protected by the Pakistanis?

RB: To a certain extent. In terms of, you know, custom and excise, etc. There is documentation of this in a BBC documentary called Traffic.

KT: So, in other words, the Pakistanis did not stop it from happening.


RB: Did not stop it happening.

KT: What sort of other financial facilities did they give Taliban from 2001 to 2021?

RB: Well again, you see, mainly these were hawala transactions to which they turned a blind eye. But 2004 onwards the Taliban started resurging in a major way because of malgovernance in Afghanistan by the Karzai regime.

KT: And what did the Pakistanis do then?

RB: They assisted them to go into these areas which were ungoverned, particularly in the…

KT: So the Pakistanis were then pushing the Taliban across the border, back into Afghanistan.

RB: Yes. They had them to control these areas. And there were local field commanders who were fighting the Afghan National Security Forces.

KT: Did the Pakistanis supply food, equipment, weapons?

RB: Everything. And also rest and recreation facilities. If the commander used to get injured they would take them to hospitals in Pakistan, in Karachi or Balochistan.

KT: So, in other words, the Pakistani government or the Pakistani authorities allowed the Taliban to use Pakistan as their deep base.

RB: Safe haven.

KT: As their safe haven, from which they could go back, get supplies, get treatment if they were injured, and then with Pakistani assistance, go back to carry on fighting.

RB: New towns, boom towns, developed outside Peshawar known as the university town in Peshawar and similarly I think Jafarabad or Pashtunabad in Quetta. There was another township developed almost in Quetta, just outside Quetta, where they bought up properties, new houses, etc. The leaders…

KT: Now tell me Mr. Banerji, did this sort of assistance continue from 2004 all the way to 2021, or were there stages when it got stepped up, when Pakistani involvement, ISI involvement, funding and training became more and more.

RB: It’s difficult to say that happened. But what is of relevance is that the Americans were all too aware that this was happening. And the Americans were trying basically to attain their own objective, to find where Osama bin Laden is hidden. Or has disappeared into. And the Americans tried to interact with the Taliban, to cause defections from within the senior Taliban leadership, in collaboration with, or in the knowledge of the Pakistan ISI.

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KT: So the Americans were well aware that the Pakistanis were funding, supporting, equipping and giving weapons to the Taliban, pushing them across the border, allowing the Taliban to use Pakistan as a safe haven when they get injured but did nothing. They just winked at it right through the period.

RB: Well there was supposed to be intelligence cooperation to find out high-value assets and the understanding was that the Pakistanis would tell the Americans about the movement of high-value assets, Arabs, Syrians and so on and then they would be eliminated by…

KT: Which Pakistan occasionally did, but nowhere near sufficiently since Osama remained protected right until…

RB: The Americans found out that the information that was being given to them was being leaked, a few days in advance, to the terrorists themselves.


Taliban fighters march in uniforms on the street in Qalat, Zabul Province, Afghanistan, in this still image taken from social media video uploaded August 19, 2021 and obtained by Reuters

KT: I don’t want to get lost in the detail of this section, but I think this section is very important because it explains the 20-25 year background of Pakistani support and involvement with the Taliban. However, let me now get to the present time. When the Taliban on the fifteenth of August literally dramatically swept into Kabul and took over, there are some people who say that that was the culmination of a second Pakistani invasion or conquest of Kabul. Once again fronted by the Taliban. You agreed that when the Taliban took power in 1996 this description applied. Does it apply again in 2021?

RB: This time everybody was a little surprised at the manner in which the Afghan National Security Forces collapsed. Nobody expected it to happen with the speed that it did.

KT: But could the Taliban have done it and certainly at the speed at which they did it without the support, assistance, training from Pakistan?

RB: They may not have, but what contributed more was the morale loss of the Afghan National Security Forces. The announcement of the American ground forces withdrawal.

KT: So that description, a Pakistani invasion fronted by the Taliban applied in 1996. You don’t think it applies equally in 2021.

RB: Perhaps not equally, yes.

KT: Okay. Let me put this to you. On the very day that the Taliban entered and swept through Kabul, the fifteenth of August 2021, some of the most important leaders of the Northern Alliance, who were opponents of Pakistan, flew to Islamabad to seek safety, security and assurances from the Pakistan government. And these included Ahmad Shah Massoud’s brothers and important Hazara leaders like Khalili and Mohaqiq. If opponents of Pakistan are going to Pakistan to seek its support, sanctuary and safety, isn’t that a sure sign that Pakistan has become very important and very powerful in this part of the world?

RB: Well yes, that’s a way of looking at it. And it included also Yunus Qanuni, a former speaker of the parliament. Now all these players were very relevant actors of the Northern Alliance in 1997. But this time they could see the writing on the wall, in the manner in which they had no other option.

KT: And they sought support and succour from someone who was their “enemy”.

RB: Basically survival and safety of their lives. And there was the fig leaf of wanting to have Pakistani intercession for having inclusive governance.

KT: But this is what I’m making: At the end of the day, opponents of Pakistan, the Northern Alliance, were seeking safety and security for their own lives from Pakistan. This is why I say to you, isn’t this a sign of how influential and powerful Pakistan has become, once the Taliban took over for the second time.

RB: Yes. That is why there is so much of triumphalism. Because both the Pakistan army and the Pakistan, due to strategic terms, Pakistan civilian leadership believe that they have achieved the primary objective of their entire policy of supporting the Taliban, that is to keep Indian influence out of Afghanistan for the foreseeable future.


KT: And proof of that is that their opponents, Ahmad Shah Massoud’s brothers, the Hazara leaders Khalili and Mohaqiq are now knocking on Pakistan’s doors to say help us, support us, save us.

RB: Yes, that could be one way of looking at it.

KT: Let me at this point come to the second big issue I want to talk with you about. Until now we’ve talked about Pakistan’s role in funding, in training, in militarily supporting the Taliban right through the 25 years from 1995-96 to 2021. Let me now talk to you about the personalities and factions that make up the Taliban. Its present emir is a man called Hibatullah Akhundzada. What do we know about him, and why is he never seen?

RB: Well he’s a Nurzai from Panjpai, which is a district in Kandahar. His father was a religious cleric, head of a mosque in Kandahar. He himself was a middle low-level official in the judicial qazi court system of the first Taliban dispensation. Known to be a fairly religious, modest low-profile person. He was selected as a sort of patchwork unity among various factions and to be kept firmly under the control of the ISI. Because the previous emir Mullah Mansoor had become too high-profile.

KT: So this is very interesting. Akhundzada was chosen as a patchwork choice, both by different factions— in other words, I presume he was everyone’s number two and no one’s number one choice — but he was also chosen because he was acceptable to the ISI. His predecessor had stood up to the ISI and the ISI didn’t want someone like that again.

RB: That’s right. Though it’s not been clearly established, Iran had meddled with the Taliban and former emir had become friendly with the Iranians, which was not to the liking of the…

KT: Akhundzada’s predecessor. That was another reason why the ISI didn’t like him. So in other words, this was the lowest common denominator choice. Is that right?

RB: That’s right.

KT: Why is he never seen?

RB: He is by temperament like that. And he adopted a very consensual style of leadership among various factions, so nobody really complained much. And also there was an incident two years into his tenure, when his brother, who was also a preacher in a mosque in Kuchlak near Quetta, was killed in a bomb explosion. And the story goes that maybe there were some of his rivals who were trying to get at Akhundzada himself, because he used to go there to pray also.

KT: But tell me. He was the, as you say, the lowest common denominator. He was everyone’s number two and no one’s number one choice. But now he’s been there 5-6 years. Is he accepted and acknowledged as the head, as the emir, or are there still people who question his position.

RB: No, he’s more or less not questioned as an emir because he’s kept to a very proper and religious profile, which is similar to that of Mullah Omar himself. Though Mullah Omar had a different stature.

KT: So his religiosity has helped secure his position.

RB: Possibly.

KT: What role will he play when the Taliban form a government in Kabul. Will he head the government or do you believe he will seek a role above the government as supreme leader, something similar to Ayatollah Khamenei in Iran?

RB: Well the parallel doesn’t quite apply, but the parallel of Mullah Omar himself might be used.


KT: Which is?

RB: Mullah Omar never took power himself. He preferred to remain in Kandahar. He left the governance to a leadership council. Now similar type of thing may happen, with three deputies parcelling out actual real political power among themselves.

KT: If this happens, in whose hands will be, to use that Indian phrase, the remote control? Who will actually have power?

RB: Well the ISI will. And the major exponent of implementing that power would be Sirajuddin Haqqani.

KT: So regardless of who is president and regardless of who is the supreme leader (if they create that post), the ISI will have real power, and they will operate through Sirajuddin Haqqani, their favourite faction of the Taliban.

RB: That’s right. But this could change, you see. These calculations could change because of the ambitions of both Mullah Baradar himself and Mullah Yaqoob, the son of Mullah Omar.

KT: Let’s come to Mullah Baradar first, we’ll come to Mullah Yaqoob after that. Now he’s one of the three deputy commanders. He has spent eight years in detention in Pakistan, but he was also the critical key interlocutor for the talks with the Americans in Doha. Tell me more about him.

RB: That’s right. He’s a Popalzai which is one of the blue-blooded tribes of the Afghan dynasty, the Durrani society. So in the caste system that they have in their tribal society—

KT: He’s at the top

RB: He’s among the people at the top. Whereas Mullah Omar himself was a Hotak, a slightly lower in the pecking order of Ghilzai. But there is a story, not confirmed, of Mullah Omar’s wife and Mullah Baradar’s wife being co-brothers-in-law. And that why he called him ‘Baradar’ and that is where he got his name of ‘Mullah Baradar’.

KT: So the name ‘Baradar’ which is Farsi for ‘brother’ is actually a name given by Mullah Omar to someone who you think might have been a brother-in-law.

RB: Yes. That’s right. It’s never been proved because—

KT: Tell me more about Mullah Baradar.

RB: Yes. Now in 2008, he tried to establish links with President Karzai and also was amenable to the idea of talking to the Americans. And this was not to the liking of the ISI.

KT: Is that why he was detained?

RB: That’s right.


KT: And he spent roughly eight years in detention?

RB: Almost 10 years. Well, 2010 to 2018.

KT: Khalilzad apparently pressed on the Pakistanis to release him and he then became the head of the talks at Doha.

RB: Not immediately. Initially, he was in a drugged stupor state and he seemed to have been allowed to recover from that, because while in detention he was supposed to have been very much in a depressed and drugged state. He couldn’t make out his bearings and things like that.

KT: Drugs because he was being given drugs by the Pakistanis—

RB: Maybe

KT: Or because he had become a druggie himself

RB: No, no. Maybe because he was being given drugs to keep him in good humour or whatever.

KT: Now the Western press often speculates that Mullah Baradar could be the president whenever the government is set up. Do you think that is likely?

RB: That is possible yes. Because now he has been fairly savvy in the diplomatic dialogue that has gone on in Doha, where there are very many others, both hardliners and retainers of the ISI who are closely under their supervision but who are also in the dialogue team

KT: But he’s handled this well

RB: He’s handled it very well

KT: So he’s shown the ability to keep together different factions of hardliners and softer people who exist within the Taliban framework.

RB: Possibly.

KT: What about Mullah Yaqoob, who is the other deputy commander and is in fact Mullah Omar’s son?

RB: Yes. He’s much younger, and he has been in touch with some other field commanders who have actually been involved in the fighting. People like Ibrahim Sadr who has now been made Interior Minister and Mullah Zakir who has now been made the Defence Minister.


KT: Is he a rival of Baradar or do they get along with each other?

RB: That’s not known. Ultimately because he’s younger to Baradar, and he has the lineage of Omar, he would like to be anointed heir eventually, but he also has to contend with Sirajuddin Haqqani’s ambition.

KT: You’re also suggesting that Mullah Yaqoob has better links with the fighting branches of the Taliban. Baradar has better links with the political, negotiating branches.

RB: Well, yes. You can say that in a way.

KT: Where into all of this does Zahyabuddin Masjid fit in?

RB: Zabiullah Mujahid

KT: Yeah. Where does he fit in? He’s clearly the television face of the Taliban as a result of his press conferences and it’s his comments that have led people to talk about the possibility of Taliban 2.0. But is he critical and important, or is he just a spokesman?

RB: He’s just a spokesman. One of three, in fact, who have been used by the Taliban in the past.

KT: The other being Suhail Shaheen?

RB: Suhail Shaheen and one other person. They had been parcelled different areas to which they would deal. But Zabiullah possibly has the most photogenic face and he seems to have become more politically savvy of late. So that is why now he has been entrusted with the initial forays.

KT: But he’s not one of the critical top leaders?

RB: No. He was a middle-level or junior-level official in the culture ministry of the first Taliban dispensation.

KT: So he’s a middle-level Taliban person who’s acquired a lot of prominence because he’s fronting the press conferences and because he has a manner and perhaps, as you put it, a photogenic face that attracts attention and gets remembered.

RB: And an example of this is when he was asked the ticklish question in the press conference about visit of CIA chief William Burns. He stepped aside and asked the foreign office official of the Taliban to answer the question, which was of course replied to in a very non-committal manner.

KT: Now the faction that is perhaps of great interest to India is what’s called the Haqqani faction. Tell me about them. The Haqqanis are often considered the brutal, tough fighting wing of the Taliban. Mike Mullen, the former American chairman of the joint chiefs of staff calls them the veritable arm of the ISI…

RB: Yes


KT: And as you said, not only do they have connections with the ISI, but Jalaluddin Haqqani was once upon a time, your words were, almost an agent of America.

RB: That’s right.

KT: So they play the game of both sides?

RB: Perhaps not anymore, because they have designated Sirajuddin as a terrorist in their own 2012 order.

KT: Sirajuddin is also the third of the three deputy commanders of the Taliban, along with Mullah Yaqoob and Mullah Baradar.

RB: That’s right. The other two are not designated so far.

KT: So tell me more about the Haqqani group.

RB: Yes. Now, Jalaluddin’s sons—they have many sons, seven sons. Three or four of them got killed in the US reprisals, drone attacks or in actual fighting. But Nasir and Siraj and Badruddin, these were the most important sons. Now Badruddin got killed. Siraj also got killed in an ordinary crime in 2013 in Islamabad. But the Islamabad police was not allowed to make any investigations about the murder. His body was carried in a VIP convoy to the tribal areas and given a decent burial.

KT: This is further proof of the link between Pakistan ISI and the Haqqani

RB: Yes. So he’s touch-me-not. And there is of course the fictional serial, the Homeland 4 serial where you have the Haqqani group attacking the US embassy in Islamabad and going into their cipher room and all that.

KT: And as you said in the beginning, the Haqqani group is the favoured, preferred faction of the Taliban for the ISI

RB: For the ISI. And we have suffered at their hands, for example, the attack on our embassy in Kabul, where we lost one diplomat and one defence personnel, was directly planned and executed by them.

KT: So does most of ISI funding, most of ISI military equipment that goes to the Taliban go to the Haqqani group within the Taliban.

RB: There is no definite evidence of that

KT: But you suspect so?

RB: I would think so yes.


KT: But the interesting thing is that the Haqqani group only merged with the Taliban in the mid-1990s, after the Taliban had come to power the first time around. And there are also stories that although Jalaluddin Haqqani was a minister in the first Taliban government, Karzai is reported to have tried to reach out to him and involve him in Karzai’s government. Karzai didn’t succeed but it’s reported that the attempts were made. How close are the bonds that bind the Haqqani group to the rest of the Taliban? Or are there differences and cracks there?

RB: Well there are individual ambitions and differences but everybody’s afraid of the Haqqani faction. Even the Taliban leaders themselves may be afraid of them. Because of the patronage they enjoy from the ISI and because of the use of suicide bombs with great facility by them which is well known to exterminate their opponents instead Afghanistan. So most of these bombings etc were being done by the Haqqani faction.

KT: So the Haqqani faction has in a sense intimidated other leaders in the Taliban.

RB: That could be. In time, you see, the families and children of the other leaders come out of Pakistan and they no longer require rest and recreation, this relationship could change.

KT: That could change. That would be in the future, because up till now the relationship has been one in which Haqqanis, because of the support, funding from Pakistan, has somewhat intimidated the rest of the Taliban.

RB: That’s true. One other reason is that they are Zadrach. They are from an area called Zadran which is lower eastern Paktia, Khost. In the tribal, again, caste systems, the Zadran are the lowest among the…

KT: Why would that help them intimidate others?

RB: No, not intimidate. But to be looked down upon by other blue-blooded Afghans.

KT: But now you’re contradicting yourself—if they’re looked down upon they won’t intimidate and frighten people.

RB: At a later date I said. It could happen.

KT: Let me put this to you. It is reported that two Haqqani brothers, Khalil and Anis, are now responsible for security in Kabul today. If that’s true, then what does it suggest?

RB: Khalil is said to be an uncle. Also not perhaps direct uncle. A cousin of Jalaluddin. Much younger, of course, than Jalaluddin. Anis of course is one of his younger sons. And he was under detention for a while.

KT: But if security is in their hands what does it suggest?

RB: This could have been a temporary measure. Now they have appointed a new acting governor, mayor, and also an intelligence chief.

KT: So this story that security was in the hands of the Haqqanis, Anis and Khalil, is not a worrying factor. It was built up by the press as a moment of concern, but you’re saying it’s not necessarily so.

RB: Possibly. I mean, you have now an appointee, unless he has aligned now with the Haqqanis—Najibullah who has been appointed Intelligence Chief of this new government. And he was known to be closer to the Dadullah faction, which was not close to the Haqqanis in the old days.


KT: You’re confusing us with details, what is the point you’re making?

RB: We don’t know whether the intelligence chief appointee is definitely a Haqqani man.

KT: Okay. So in other words, the regime that is forming, to the extent that we can see, is not necessarily under Haqqani control—

RB: It could be an eclectic regime.

KT: It could be an eclectic regime. And the point you’re therefore reinforcing is that the initial belief that because Anis Haqqani was in Kabul, Khalil Haqqani was in Kabul, it was reported that the Haqqanis controlled Kabul’s security. That initial belief is questionable.

RB: Yeah. It could change.

KT: Let’s come very briefly to the situation in Afghanistan as it’s begun to emerge during the last 10-11 days. I believe the director general of the ISI flew to Kandahar when Mullah Baradar was there and they were seen together praying at a Mosque. There are also reports that Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi spent a day or two in Kabul, but he himself has denied it. What does all of this suggest about the role Pakistan is playing in helping put together a Taliban government?

RB: Well they would definitely like to remain very close to whatever leadership emerges among the Taliban.

KT: And are they pulling the strings?

RB: They would definitely be pulling the strings. They’re trying to make it a pleasant phenomenon. Particularly Mullah Baradar having had this experience of detention in a Pakistani jail, he would be very sensitive to such, you know, behaviour.

KT: But then that…

RB: They’re going the extra mile.

KT: But then therefore there would be problems. Pakistanis want to pull the strings and ensure that their chosen people have critical posts. But Mullah Baradar, who has been in detention for eight years, will want to ensure that Pakistan’s role is limited. There are tensions here now.

RB: They could develop later. In the sense that Pakistan…The Taliban leadership will not immediately put a red rag to the Pakistani bull.

KT: They have already appointed Acting Minister of Defence, Acting Minister of Interior, as well as, I believe, an Acting Foreign Minister. They’ve also appointed a Finance Minister. They’ve also appointed an Acting Governor and an Acting Mayor. Now are these people, you suspect, the Pakistanis have put in place, or are they independent credible people who have support within Taliban? Which of the two?

RB: I think it is the latter because they have already played a reasonably well-known role in the actual fighting on the ground. And earlier they had not been accommodated to the extent that they had committed in the actual fighting.


KT: So they’re getting their rewards now?

RB: Possibly. But this is something one cannot assert for certain.

KT: But you’re also saying something else. Your sense, your hunch is that these are not Pakistani puppets being put in place. These are people with credible track records of their own.

RB: Yes. And the Taliban must have convinced the ISI that they have to accommodate them or the unity of whatever leadership—

KT: Not so long ago you were talking about how the remote control will be in ISI hands.

RB: It will still be.

KT: But now what you’re saying suggests that that remote control isn’t working because the Taliban is convincing the ISI that the people who they’re placing in acting positions are not necessarily all chosen ones. They’re people they’re rewarding because they’ve done good work.

RB: Well you see ISI would know much more about the inner factions and pressures and pulls that the Taliban are faced with. So they would concur only with those things they are comfortable with. So they would know more than us what is happening within the Taliban.

KT: So what you see may not necessarily be the truth. The surface—

RB: This is an analysis from a distance from a person who has retired from intelligence analysis ten years down the line.

KT: Let me put this to you. We’ve seen last week. Images of Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah talking to Anis Haqqani, talking to the Pakistani Ambassador in Kabul, and there were reports in the Western press that Abdullah and Karzai could play some sort of role in shaping a government, perhaps smoothening the way for the Taliban. Is that your understanding as well?

RB: They may have tried to give that impression but the Taliban went through the motions of engaging with them and these impressions have since been dispelled despite efforts still being made by Karzai, maybe not so much by Abdullah Abdullah, to give this impression. Because Karzai at one stage, if you recall, had been the Deputy Foreign Minister for the Mujahudeen. He fell out because his father was murdered in a Kandahar Mosque, in a plot which he believed had been hatched by the ISI.

KT: So in other words, this initial impression of last week, that Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah were playing a role in trying to shape or help the Taliban is actually one that Abdullah and Karzai were fostering. The Taliban were simply going through the polite motions of meeting former leaders as a courtesy, nothing more.

RB: Yes. Trying to give an impression to the West that maybe they are serious about having an inclusive set up. And they wouldn’t mind that if your recognition was on the way. But after that we’ve had the visit of the American CIA chief who had a direct one-to-one meeting with Mullah Baradar.

KT: And Karzai and Abdullah were not there?

RB: They were definitely not there. His guards were disarmed in the palace where he was staying, in the Presidential palace. So he had to move with his family to Abdullah’s house.


KT: What does that suggest? That move from his own house to Abdullah’s house?

RB: Insecurity. That maybe, why my guards have been disarmed…


FILE PHOTO: Civilians prepare to board a plane during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Kabul, Afghanistan August 18, 2021. Photo: Reuters.

KT: So that entire picture that was presented both in the Western press and the Indian press that Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah were playing a critical role was actually done more by Karzai and Abdullah to build their own image. The Taliban were simply being respectful, they were getting in touch out of politeness, because they don’t treat these people as serious.

RB: I don’t think they are going to share power easily with them.

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KT: Now it’s roughly 11-12 since the Taliban came to power and they still haven’t formed a government. I know they’ve set up acting ministers—Finance, Defence, Interior—they’ve got an Acting Governor and Mayor of Kabul. They say they will only form a proper government after the 31st when foreign soldiers have left. Do you believe that? Or are there problems in forming a government and is this just an excuse?

RB: No, I think they are playing for time, for international recognition. Once they get that then they will actually declare the emirate and then the leadership council

KT: But can they get international recognition if there isn’t a government to recognise?

RB: They want to have an emirat and they’re still toying with the idea of what sort of constitution they’re going to accept. The 1964 Constitution is being held out to them as a possible compromise document.

KT: But that is a Zahir Shah Constitution.

RB: Yes. But it’s a work in progress. If they add some Islamic clauses into that—

KT: But the Zahir Shah Constitution had a kingship. Do you see the emirate becoming a kingship?

RB: No. The emirate will have to be given some recognition in whatever form, sharia law in the emirate. So that is what they are working at.

KT: So this delay in forming a government is playing for time. It’s not an indication that they are having problems.

RB: Initially that seemed to be so, but now with the announcement of these designations I would tend to agree.

KT: My last question: How seriously do you take the resistance in the Panjshir? Can Amrullah Saleh, Ahmad Shah Massoud’s son actually threaten the Taliban. Or is it only a matter of time before the Taliban vanquishes them?


RB: Yes. They cannot really threaten but surrender may not happen immediately.

KT: What about defeat?

RB: Defeat also may not happen immediately because Panjshir has always been well defended. Their capability to attack and take on more areas from where they are, that’s in dispute. That’s why the Taliban feel it’s not a serious problem.

KT: So Panjshir because of its geographical location surrounded by these mountains can defend itself, but it’s very unlikely that the resistance in Panjshir will be able to spread beyond the borders of Panjshir.

RB: There could be some political accommodation also with Ahmad Massoud because he has the sort of charisma which the Taliban may not want to totally ignore. But his deputy, the former vice-president, the acting President, Amrullah Saleh is never going to make his peace with the Taliban.

KT: We end now with me repeating to you one question: You do believe, no matter what government is formed, at the end of the day, the hand of the ISI will be there behind? Even if the Taliban find credible faces of their own, the strings will be in ISI hands?

RB: For a considerable while, yes.

KT: How long is a considerable while?

RB: Anything between six months to a year at least.

KT: But after a year, the government could begin to break free?

RB: It would depend on the safe havens, where their children are, where their families are. What they do with their properties in Pakistan. If they can have better sanctions or options available to them inside Afghanistan then—

KT: So in other words, if the world wants the Taliban to loosen the strings that attach them to the ISI, we need to find ways of helping them with their sons and their properties so they can establish independence and separation.

RB: Yes.

KT: Thank you very much indeed. This has been a comprehensive interview, you’ve given us incredible detail. I’m not sure everyone will be able to follow all of it, but for those who care, both about the history and the details of the Pakistani involvement and the ISI in particular with the Taliban, and those who also want to know who are the factions and who are the personalities within the Taliban, you’ve been like an encyclopedia.

RB: Thank you.


KT: Thank you very much indeed, Banerji. Take care, stay safe.