Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai is expected to be a key player in the new government in Afghanistan after the Taliban’s swift victory, while Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar is likely to be the new President. But to the 1982 batch of the Indian Military Academy (IMA) in Dehradun, Stanikzai was ‘Sheru’.
Stanikzai, a deputy foreign minister in the last Taliban regime, passed out of the Indian Military Academy at Dehradun. He was 20 years old when he joined 44 other foreign cadets of the Bhagat Battalion’s Keren Company at the IMA.
He held no radical views at the time and was likeable guy, Major General DA Chaturvedi (retired), Stanikzai’s batchmate and a recipient of the Param Vishisht Seva Medal, Ati Vishisht Seva Medal and Sena Medal, told TOI.
He was trained at the officers’ academy in the 1970s, under the Indo-Afghan defence cooperation programme.
Born in 1963 in the Baraki Barak district of Logar province, Stanikzai completed his pre-commission training at the IMA for a year and a half before joining the Afghan National Army as a lieutenant; this was just after Afghanistan was overrun by the Soviet Union.
In the 1980s, he left the Afghan army and joined ‘Jihad’ against the Soviet army, and by 1996, Stanikzai had left the army, joining the Taliban. He was holding negotiations with the Clinton administration to make the US give diplomatic recognition to the militant outfit.
In the years that followed, he became one of Taliban’s key negotiators. When Taliban set up its political office in Doha, he ran it and led talks on behalf of the Taliban. The English speaking soldier was considered the face of the Taliban for the west and still remains one of its top negotiators.
Stanikzai’s past training in India, his former batchmates believe, could be a trump card for the Ministry of External Affairs to speak with him and enter into dialogue with the Taliban.
