ISLAMABAD – The US-backed ‘reconciliation’ strategy with Taliban without including Pakistan is likely to meet the same fate which the previous peace initiatives had met in Afghanistan.
The paradoxical notions that have long influenced Pak-US relationship and have always been part of the US Afghan policy are again evident in the so-called reconciliation plan with Taliban. On one hand, the US sponsors dialogue with Taliban, and that too, without involving Pakistan. While on the other hand, it wants Pakistan Army to jump into North Waziristan without ‘wasting a second.’
Again, Chairman of US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, and Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, are hallucinated with the images of ever-increasing militant sanctuaries in North Waziristan and, therefore, deem it inevitable to ‘bless’ the region with countless drones. The US strategy is crystal clear, a stick for Pakistan and a carrot for India. The massive increase in drone attacks in NWA, the reports about US militarily eyeing Balochistan, and stereotypically boisterous statements from the key US officials suggest that US through NATO would keep pricking Pakistan by means of inflicting collateral damage in Pakistan’s territory unless NWA operation is kicked off.
In Afghanistan, the secretive meetings of Taliban leaders with the NATO command and Indian military and diplomatic officials are underway while the UN stays completely out of the loop. Luckily or unluckily, United Nations Afghanistan is not the only ‘victim’ of Indo-US nexus as Pakistan’s Embassy in Kabul is completely marginalized in the present scenario too. Pakistani diplomats there reportedly carry only a titular presence and stay ignorant of most of the latest and crucial developments.
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