RASC News Agency: The Afghanistan Freedom Party, led by General Abdul Malik, has sharply criticized reports of secret agreements between the Taliban and Pakistan, denouncing what it called “shadow diplomacy and backroom negotiations” that threaten to once again drag the nation into a cycle of war, distrust, and devastation. The party’s statement reflects a growing public unease over the Taliban’s covert engagements with regional powers, conducted without transparency or national consultation.
In a formal declaration issued on Wednesday, October 22, the Freedom Party asserted:
“Throughout Afghanistan’s history, whenever the destiny of this land has been determined behind closed doors in the absence of genuine national representation and the voices of its ethnic communities the consequences have invariably been catastrophic: war, destruction, and the relentless suffering of the people.”
The statement followed revelations by Pakistan’s Defense Minister, Khawaja Asif, who admitted in an interview with ARY News that the details of Islamabad’s recent ceasefire accord with the Taliban remain classified and could not be shared publicly. His remarks have fueled suspicions that the Taliban regime, already isolated and internationally unrecognized, continues to negotiate its survival through secretive and unaccountable arrangements with foreign powers.
According to the Freedom Party, this lack of transparency echoes the infamous 2020 Doha Agreement between the Taliban and the United States a deal the party described as a “historic deception and betrayal of the Afghanistani nation.” That agreement, the statement argued, paved the way for the Taliban’s violent return to power while excluding the Afghanistani people from shaping their own political future.
“The hidden accord in Doha produced a national calamity,” the party declared. “Now, the Taliban’s secret dealings with Pakistan mark the continuation of that same disastrous trajectory a pattern of foreign bargaining conducted in the shadows, deliberately keeping the Afghanistani nation ignorant of its own fate.”
The party’s statement reaffirmed that “the people of Afghanistan the rightful owners of this land must be consulted in any decision that concerns their destiny.” It warned that no entity, particularly one that seized power through force and fear, possesses the moral or legal legitimacy to define Afghanistan’s future unilaterally.
In a separate passage, the Freedom Party accused the Taliban of striking similar covert deals with China and Russia, warning that these agreements, rather than promoting economic progress, have effectively legitimized the “systematic plunder of Afghanistan’s natural wealth.” The party condemned what it called the Taliban’s “policy of silence and submission,” under which the country’s mineral and energy resources are being bartered away without oversight, transparency, or benefit to the public.
“The Taliban’s opaque diplomacy,” the statement read, “has turned Afghanistan into a marketplace for exploitation, where foreign powers reap the profits while the Afghanistani people inherit only poverty and despair.”
The Freedom Party further noted that the Taliban’s lack of public accountability and their reliance on secrecy have deepened an already profound rift between the regime and the population.
“Those who sign such agreements neither derive authority from the people’s mandate nor possess national legitimacy,” the party said. “Decisions made in the absence of public consent cannot and will not represent the Afghanistani nation’s interests.”
In its conclusion, the Freedom Party called for the country’s future to be determined only by legitimate and democratic actors those who believe in the sovereignty of the people and are willing to answer to them.
“Any political or security agreement forged without the Afghanistani nation’s awareness and approval is devoid of legitimacy, morality, and purpose,” the statement asserted. “Such deals are not pathways to peace, but preludes to further betrayal.”
As these warnings intensify, the Taliban leadership has remained conspicuously silent, neither confirming nor denying the existence of secret negotiations with Pakistan or any other country. Political experts argue that this silence reflects not prudence, but weakness the behavior of an isolated movement increasingly dependent on foreign patrons to sustain its rule.
Analysts warn that by continuing to operate through secrecy and repression, the Taliban risk further alienating an already disillusioned population. The regime’s clandestine diplomacy, they say, exposes its deep insecurity and fear of transparency a fear rooted in the knowledge that public scrutiny would unravel the myth of its legitimacy.
Today, Afghanistan stands trapped between external manipulation and internal despotism. For many Afghanistani citizens, the Taliban’s rule no longer symbolizes sovereignty, but subjugation a regime that governs not in the name of the people, but in defiance of them.
