Popular Front Applauds Taliban’s ‘Resistance’ Against US Power in Afghanistan

As the Popular Front of India (PFI) hailed the Taliban regime and expressed ‘hope’ for Afghanistan, it said what the country had seen was Taliban resistance against US occupation. ‘This is similar to the resistance against US occupation in Vietnam and Bolivia when the US was forced to retreat,’ said veteran PFI leader and National Executive Council Member Parappurathu Koya.

‘The Taliban are portrayed in the Western media in a distorted manner and really aren’t what is happening. We should not view the Taliban with prejudice. India needs to start diplomatic relations to keep Pakistan away from Afghanistan,’ Koya said in the article, ‘Taliban return and future of Afghanistan’ – the online edition of the party’s mouthpiece on August 22.

Koya asserts that the Afghan people were subjected to brutal persecution under American occupation. ‘The Ashraf Ghani government was rife with corruption. This made things easier for the Taliban,’ said Koya, who became a lecturer in the Department of Collegiate Education after earning a Master’s degree in English language and literature from the University of Calicut.

The PFI describes itself as a neo-social movement committed to empowering people from minority communities such as Dalits and other weaker sections of society. It was founded in Kerala in 2006 through the merger of three Muslim organizations formed after the demolition of the Babri Masjid — the National Development Front of Kerala, Karnataka Forum for Dignity and Manitha Neethi Pasarai of Tamil Nadu. In Kerala, many of the leaders of the organization, especially the founders, including Koya, were members of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).

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Strength and Support

PFI once claimed to have more than 40,000 members, but its membership declined after 2010 when its activists allegedly hacked off the hand of a professor at a Kerala college. As it stands, PFI remains a force to reckon with in Kerala, with over three lakh sympathizers and 25,000 cadres. The Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), the political wing of PFI, has presence in 20 of the 140 Assembly constituencies in Kerala.