How the Taliban Use Zalmay Khalilzad as a “Useful Idiot”
Source: Afghanistan Green Trend (AGT)
The publication Al-Mursad, which is run and funded by Directorate 015 of the Taliban’s General Intelligence Directorate, recently triumphantly claimed that the Taliban, during a “special operation,” eliminated three senior members of the terrorist group ISIS-Khorasan inside Pakistan.
However, documents from the republican era, official statements by ISIS-Khorasan itself, and reliable information from the Afghanistan Green Trend (AGT) tell a completely different story:
1 — Sheikh Abdulhakim Tawhidi
Al-Mursad claimed he was assassinated in the tribal region of Orakzai (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa). But the person shown in the photo is not Sheikh Abdulhakim Tawhidi.
The real “Sheikh Hakim” was one of Osama bin Laden’s closest associates in Tora Bora. Under the republic, he was captured, imprisoned in Bagram, later released, rejoined the Taliban, and was killed many years ago in a special NDS operation in Nangarhar.
The image published by Al-Mursad as Sheikh Abdulhakim Tawhidi actually belongs to his brother, Qazi Bashir, who is still alive and living in Kunar province.
In other words, the Taliban “resurrected” a dead man, “killed” him again, and then used Khalilzad as a “useful idiot” to spread this lie.
2 — Abu Zar (Musa, nicknamed “Pahlawan”)
The Taliban listed him among those allegedly killed in October 2025. In reality, Abu Zar was killed in early 2024 (about two years before that) in a clash with Baloch separatists, or the BLA, in Pakistan’s Balochistan province. His death had nothing to do with the Taliban.
3 — Burhan, known as Zaid (resident of Kunar province)
Al-Mursad claimed that the Taliban killed him in Pakistan’s Punjab province. Zaid was a reckless man who months earlier had eloped with a girl from his village in Kunar, fled to Punjab, and worked there as a regular security guard at a vegetable market.
Eventually, the girl’s family found him and killed him according to local custom. He was not even shot.
Zaid had no operational role in the terrorist group ISIS-Khorasan. It is likely that the girl’s family reported him to the Taliban as an ISIS member.
Zalmay Khalilzad, who over the past year increasingly behaved like the unofficial ambassador of Mullah Haibatullah in Washington, enthusiastically republished Al-Mursad’s falsehoods without the slightest verification and wrote that the Taliban are a good partner for the United States in combating terrorism.
Thus, he has turned into a “completely useful idiot” for the Taliban’s propaganda and intelligence apparatus of Directorate 015 — someone who foolishly and for free attempts to give international legitimacy to Al-Mursad’s fabrications, make himself more beloved by Mullah Haibatullah, and carve out a new political niche for himself in Washington.
