Excerpt from:
Regional powers are not looking forward to it. But they cannot agree on what to do about it
www.economist.com
Pakistan is the most significant. It has not only the longest border and deepest links with Afghanistan, but also close ties to the Taliban.
Its powerful security establishment has long played a double game, publicly aiding America in its “war on terror” even as it secretly harbored Osama bin Laden and quietly sustained Afghanistan’s Islamist radicals. Concerned more by rivalry with a much-bigger India than with any danger from ragtag jihadists, Pakistan’s generals view Afghanistan as their own “strategic depth”. Their main goal has been to deny the space to anyone else, even if that meant using the Taliban as a cat’s paw, and even at the risk of blowback to Pakistan.
That risk is not a small one, as attested by the death of over 20,000 Pakistani civilians in a wave of Islamist terror between 2002 and 2016, much of it perpetrated by Afghan-linked groups. Even so,
many in the Pakistani establishment are privately touting the Taliban’s imminent takeover as a victory for Islam, a defeat for America and a finger in the eye to India, which has given substantial economic and military aid to the Kabul government and this week evacuated its consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif.
Publicly, Pakistani officials say they have been blindsided by the speed of America’s departure and the disintegration of the Afghan government. They insist that they wished for a negotiated peace, not a military takeover by the Taliban.
They also maintain that Pakistan has little influence over the Islamists. A Western diplomat in the region scoffs at Pakistani disingenuousness, suggesting that its generals will again burn their fingers playing with Islamist matches.
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