Pak appoints new envoy to Afghanistan

Kabul [Afghanistan], August 27 : Pakistan has appointed Ubaidur Rehman Nizamani as the new ambassador to Afghanistan, media reports said citing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Pakistan.
This comes as Mansoor Ahmad Khan's tenure as the Pakistan envoy to Afghanistan would end on August 30, 2022. This is the first diplomat positing since the Taliban took over power in Afghanistan.
Nizamani currently holds the position of Director General Europe at Pakistan's Foreign Ministry and he has been holding the Foreign Service positions for more than 20 years, reported Afghanistan's local media portal Khaama Press.
It is pertinent to note that he also served as Director General of South Asia and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in the Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Pakistan's new ambassador-designate to Afghanistan, Nizamani, has also served as Deputy Chief of Mission and the Charge d'Affaires of Pakistan Mission in the US.
The outgoing ambassador, Mansoor Ahmad Khan, will retire from the service at the end of this month after reaching superannuation (pension granted to a Government servant who is entitled by rule to retire).
Nizamani's appointment as the ambassador of Pakistan to Afghanistan is the first ambassadorial posting to Afghanistan after the Taliban took over Kabul in August 2021, as per the media portal.
Meanwhile, a Taliban official advised the Islamic Emirate to remove pro-Pakistan people from its ranks in order to save Afghanistan from international isolation.
Mufti Abdul Hakim, a member of the Taliban press, said, "The government agencies in the Taliban regime are full of people who are either citizens of Pakistan or have close ties to Pakistan. If the Taliban don't remove pro-Pakistan people from their ranks, they will be further isolated," reported South Asia Media Research Institute (SAMRI).
Hakim, who now analyzes the benefits of the group in television debates, has recently said that the government institutions in the Taliban regime are filled with people who are either citizens of Pakistan or have close ties with Islamabad.
He admitted this issue in a discussion on Shamshad TV and said that if the Taliban does not change its policy and does not remove people committed to Pakistan from its ranks, there is a possibility that this group will be isolated.

Notably, Pakistan and its ally Taliban are at loggerheads. Pakistan has committed a strategic blunder in thinking that the Taliban, which the country helped in fighting a US-backed Afghanistan for over two decades, will fulfil Islamabad's wishes.
Both the allies are at loggerheads with the threat of a bloody skirmish along the Durand Line on the anvil, reported the Afghan Diaspora Network.
The ties between Taliban-led Afghanistan and Pakistan have been frosty of late and matters have been exacerbated by recent border tensions. Last month, a number of videos emerged from border standoff in Balochistan and the Nimroz provinces of two countries.
Earlier, the Taliban-appointed Defence Minister said that Afghanistan will not allow any other country to act aggressively against its interests.
The refusal to accept the status of the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan by the Taliban regime has clearly shown the cracks in the relationship between the two countries.
The Taliban have so far not shown any signs of acceding to these wishes. Rather, on several occasions, they have rejected Pakistan's demands, including the one to recognise the Durand Line.
'Borders' that have remained porous for centuries have suddenly been shut down, dividing clans and families, according to Toronto-based think tank International Forum For Rights And Security (IFFRAS).
"The enormous harms that have been suffered by the Pashtun community have engendered a deep distrust of the Pakistani state in the minds of Pashtuns on either side of the Durand Line," IFFRAS said.