A senior Russian diplomat revealed that Russia is exchanging information with the Afghan Taliban and seeing shared interests to counteracting the spread of militant organisation Islamic State, foreign media reported.
Zamir Kabulov, head of the department at the Russian foreign ministry responsible for Afghanistan who is also a Kremlin special representative in the country, told Interfax news agency on Wednesday, ‘Taliban interests objectively coincide with ours,”
‘I have said before that we have communication channels with the Taliban to exchange information,’ he said. Kabulov claimed that both the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban said that they did not recognise (IS leader Abu Bakr) Al-Baghdadi as a caliph, that they don’t recognise ISIL, using an acronym for ISIS.
“That is very important,” added Kabulov, an Afghanistan expert who held negotiations with Taliban leader Mullah Omar in the mid-1990s, when the group seized a Russian transport plane and held seven Russians hostage for a year in the Kandahar airport.
Contacted by AFP, foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova confirmed Kabulov’s remarks were reported correctly. “It has to do with fighting the Islamic State group,” she said.
Russia considers the Taliban a terrorist group and it is banned in the country, along with the Islamic State group.
