'War on terror'

Israr Shah is a politician who lost both of his legs in an attack in 2007. He is one of the Liberalists, a member of the worldly, West-friendly party of Pakistan. But he believes it was a mistake for Pakistan to join the US "War on Terror." Violence has grown exponentially since October 2001, when the war in Afghanistan started. The question is why.

Taliban expert Ahmed Rashid told the German public broadcasting station ARD years ago that the problem was that in 2001 the Afghan Taliban were driven out of the cities but not beaten militarily. They were then able to regroup in Pakistan. And at the same time the Pakistani Taliban, which had not previously existed, came into being. Even today the Pakistani army is not taking any action against the Afghan extremists, that is at any rate the charge levelled at Islamabad very openly and publicly by Washington.

Recently, the US' highest ranking military official Admiral Mike Mullen went public with his views: "The Haqqani Network for one acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan's internal intelligence agency."

Allies or adversaries?

Whether or not he made his comments out of frustration about the situation or because he wanted to put Pakistan under pressure, his interview created the impression that Washington was losing its grip on its own representatives. Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbanin Khar reacted by telling the US if such comments were repeated, "You will lose an ally. You cannot afford to alienate Pakistan. And you cannot afford to alienate the Pakistani people."

The current row has raised the question whether the USA and Pakistan are allies or adversaries. Experts believe the US decision to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by 2014 gives Pakistan more leeway and possibly leaves the door open for Islamabad to conduct diplomacy with the Taliban, as highlighted by Pakistani political expert Quatrina Hosain. "The endgame in Afghanistan is now beginning. And Pakistan has to make sure that Pakistan's interests are protected. The United States is going to pull out of Afghanistan and Pakistan is going to be left with Afghanistan as our neighbour; we have to deal with Afghanistan forever," she says.

The monster called Islamism was created as a result of US and Pakistani military intervention against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, so it would only make sense for both to try and destroy it in harness. But that kind of close cooperation does not seem to be on the horizon at the moment.

Author: Kai Küstner / sb
Editor: Grahame Lucas