Still not quite getting it.
The Pakistanis are currently engaged in a much heralded crackdown on jihadists. But they are limiting those operations to the jihadists in the northwest tribal region — i.e., those whose primary target is the Pakistani government. By contrast, the Taliban — i.e., the jihadists targeting the U.S. and Afghanistan — are holed up in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan, under the protection of the ISI. In fact, there are now reports that Mullah Omar has been moved to Karachi to protect him from U.S. drone attacks.
ISI created the Taliban with the help of then Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto (whose widower, Asif Ali Zadari, is now running the Pakistani government). It continued to recognize the Taliban as Afghanistan’s government even after the 9/11 attacks (Saudi Arabia was the only other nation to recognize the Taliban as Afghanistan’s government). In fact, IBD says, “before the U.S. invasion, Islamabad evacuated as many as 1,000 intelligence officers, Taliban commanders and foot soldiers from Afghanistan in a major airlift spanning several nights.” Pakistan has always regarded the Taliban as a strategic asset against India. Thus, the editorial alleges, ISI expects to install Mullah Omar again once the U.S. vacates Afghanistan in the next couple of years
Palmerston said that nations have no eternal friends nor perpetual enemies, but they do have eternal and perpetual interests. Pakistan still doesn’t understand that they have nothing that India wants, and that they have nurtured vipers to their bosoms.
One simply wishes that their nukes could be made to vanish and those caves in their hills would swallow up the whole lot of them. When you feel that way about your allies that might indicate a larger problem.
“with friends like these who needs enemies?”
Our nukes fired at theirs…secondaries all around. We’d be back before Christmas and ‘God bless us, one and all’.
Though I do not remember when I first read Mr. Palmerston’s phrase, it has always stayed with me. Initially I thought how silly, of course we have friends; until I understood what he was saying.
Pakistan still doesn’t understand that they have nothing that India wants
I wonder – aren’t you perhaps reading Pakistani policy primarily as defensive, when perhaps the reason the Paki military/security apparatus wants “strategic depth” via effective control of Afghanistan is because they know their own policy in Kashmir is provocative to the point of war?