Afghanistan was a test case for our foreign policy resolve, an arena where while leveraging other tools of foreign policy, use of instruments of force and military diplomacy/intelligence should have been predominant.
If Pakistan succumbs to American pressure, it will continue to be engaged in a long war of attrition on its western borders. If Pakistan resists American pressure, it will be isolated in the world and the international community will have to fall back upon India to put a firewall around the AfPak region.
The resumption of India-Pakistan dialogue is closely linked with US moves in Afghanistan in the context of Obama’s publicly declared intent to begin the process of US military withdrawal from Afghanistan from 2011.
India is justified in seeing the US move to go ahead with the sale of the F-16s as an attempt to balance America’s strategic partnership with India by once again propping up Pakistan as a regional challenger.
In Late 2009, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the radical umbrella terror group operating Pakistan, had threatened to unleash a chemical warfare against Pakistan and planned to use the age old… Continue reading Taliban and Weapons of Mass Disruption Threat
That the ISI patron is now becoming the victim of jehadi terrorism does not bode well for Pakistan, which now has to recast the agency’s role and organizational ethos to contain the Taliban.
Getting the hard core Taliban to concede the fight without loss of face is preferable to destroying them. The latter course is rendered risky by the linkages between the Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Taliban and Punjabi Taliban and their penetration of the Pakistani state and society.
