UAE snaps ties with Taliban

By Kesava Menon

MANAMA (Bahrain), SEPT. 22. The United Arab Emirates today cut diplomatic ties with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, asked them to close its embassy in Abu Dhabi within 24 hours and repatriate the staff.

After this swift surgical strike, which followed on the Taliban's failure to hand over Osama bin Laden, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are the only two countries which maintain diplomatic ties with the Islamic outfit in Kabul.

The UAE's decision can have several implications. The President, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al Nahyan, is one of the senior-most leaders in the Arab world and while the UAE does not have the religious prestige that Saudi Arabia does, its decision will cast a deep impression on the rest of the Arab world. Whether it will lead to a similar decision by Saudi Arabia is not certain since the Kingdom's rulers will have to assess how the Taliban sympathisers in their country will react. Osama might have been disowned by Saudi Arabia and his own family but the idea of handing over someone they had considered one of their own might be too much to bear for fervent Islamists in the Kingdom.

What will be watched is whether the UAE's decision would signal a seminal shift in respect of the militant Islamic movement as a whole. Rich businessmen in the Emirates have been among the foremost sources of funds for the Islamic movement worldwide, including some of its most virulent forms. This is an accusation levelled not just by the West or others victimised by fundamentalist terrorism, but also by diplomats from Muslim majority countries like Algeria that have had to contend with the scourge.

It is noteworthy that the U.S. administration has twice called in the envoys from West Asian states for a joint meeting at which the need to cut off funds to terrorist groups was said to have been the main topic discussed. Unprecedentedly, the U.S. State Department has also let the news leak that very tough language was used from their side during these meetings. While the U.S. President Mr. George W. Bush's remarks about going after terrorist groups ``with a global reach'' might have caused confusion, it would appear that the U.S. was far more clear- minded about the need to hit at the sources of funding.

Meanwhile, a Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman said Islamabad played a key role in communicating between Kabul and the rest of the world and had no plans to follow the UAE in severing relations with the Taliban.

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