In a week full of jaw-droppers from the Biden administration, this ranks right up there.
“The Taliban and Haqqani Network are separate entities,” @StateDept Spokesperson. 🤦🏻 pic.twitter.com/XpCTn68mfH
— Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud (@IhsanTipu) August 27, 2021
What’s worse is that I have no idea if State Department spokesman Ned Price is gaslighting us or if the administration actually believes this insanity. Long War Journal‘s Thomas Joscelyn responded in stunned disbelief: “Wait, did he really say this?”
Yes, though this is even worse. This is like saying key Islamic State senior figures in Iraq and Syria aren’t really ISIS. And ISIS special forces aren’t ISIS. And ISIS isn’t ISiS.
— Thomas Joscelyn (@thomasjoscelyn) August 27, 2021
Let me quote from a good writeup in the Wall Street Journal from just yesterday morning titled, “In Taliban-Ruled Afghanistan, Al Qaeda-Linked Haqqani Network Rises to Power.”
Since the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul, the normally elusive Haqqani network, which is built around a family of the same name, has assumed a public role in the Afghan capital. Khalil Haqqani, brother of the group’s founder, Jalaluddin, addressed the faithful in public in Kabul’s Pol-e Khishti Mosque last week—despite a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head. . . .
The network’s de facto leader, Sirajuddin Haqqani, son of Jalaluddin, worked closely with Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenant and al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan, according to files recovered in bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan. Today, Sirajuddin is the Taliban’s military chief, and his forces have been put in charge of security in Kabul.
“The Haqqanis expose the lie that there is a line between Taliban and other jihadist groups, especially al Qaeda,” said H.R. McMaster, a national-security adviser in the Trump administration and former deputy commander for U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan.
But, according to the U.S. government, the murderous, al-Qaeda-allied terrorists of the Taliban are our somehow our “partners.” But the murderous, al-Qaeda-allied terrorists of the Haqqani Network are not . . . even though the Taliban and the Haqqani Network are deeply intertwined. Everyone keeping up?
