Middle East expert Daniel Pipes and
Afghan
Ambassador Ravan Farhadi. |
MIDDLE EAST FORUM
Post-Taliban Regime
May Recognize Israel
EXCLUSIVE Story and Photos by Tim Boxer
 HE
official representative of Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance told me
the new government that will emerge from the American military
campaign to depose the Taliban “will exchange ambassadors with
Israel.”
Ravan Farhadi, ambassador to the United
Nations of the Islamic State of Afghanistan, which controls a
quarter of the country and is recognized by nearly all nations as
the legitimate government, declared, “Israel has a right to
exist.”
He added, “We will recognize Israel. Why not?
Egypt has.”
A key element in a post-Taliban government, he
said, will be the 86-year-old King Mohammad Zahir Shah,
ousted in 1973. “It is not out of the question to restore the
monarchy,” Farhadi said.
Farhadi told me that 20 years ago the king was
introduced to the Israeli ambassador in Katmandu, Nepal. “They
both shook hands.”
He recounted that story as an indication of
friendship between Afghanistan and Israel.
Ambassador Ravan Farhadi and wife,
Adela
Hachemi Farhadi. |
Farhadi appeared for a briefing at the Middle
East Forum, a think tank headed by Daniel Pipes, held
at a law firm in Midtown Manhattan.
While insisting that “all resolutions of the
UN General Assembly and Security Council be implemented,” he said
that Afghanistan “does not want to be a factor in that region.”
Farhadi said that although Pakistan’s
president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, claims he’s helping the
U.S. in its fight against the Taliban, “we have to recognize that
they created the Taliban.”
He faulted Pakistan’s military intelligence
agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), for “providing
armaments, military advisors and non-Afghans to fight in the Taliban
army.”
And he charged that “Saudi Arabia provided
the finances for a good part of these Pakistani fighters. Our side
was defeated in 1997 not by the Taliban but by the Pakistanis.”
He said that three years ago 500 Arabs came to
Afghanistan where Pakistan arranged for the establishment of
training camps. They came from Yemen, Morocco, Nigeria and
especially from Saudi Arabia.
“Today they have battalions, each of them
with 2,500 Arabs. They got training not only for military operations
but for terror, too.”
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