Pakistan is the original Talibani state. Jihad is in its DNA.
"The shame of defeat at the hands of the Taliban is the greatest embarrassment for the sole superpower of the world." - General Mirza Aslam Beg, former Chief of the Pakistan Army, "The superpower under siege" July 2011.
"Russia and America are primarily responsible for Afghanistan’s tragedy. As the saying goes, when elephants fight the grass gets trampled. But Pakistan cannot be exonerated either. With Gen Mirza Aslam Beg as its architect, Pakistan’s Afghan policy single-mindedly centred on the quest for strategic depth against India. And so for decades the Taliban leadership, fighters and their families were provided residence, healthcare, and protection by Pakistan. No one believes us when we claim otherwise." - Pervez Hoodbhoy, "Who messed up Afghanistan?" Dawn, July 2021.
"In fact, all three US presidents since 2010 divided and demoralized Afghans – with unproductive talks (Obama); deals with the enemy (Trump); and ripping out the army’s backbone (Biden).
There was never any attempt to confront Pakistan over its role as the aggressor." - Chris Alexander, "Pakistan's role in what's happening in Afghanistan" Toronto Sun, August 17, 2021.
"Pakistan is not a nation, it's just a state of mind. There is no such people as 'Pak', like we have Afghans in Afghanistan, Kazakhs in Kazakhstan and Balochs in Balochistan. Where are the Pak people?" - Tarek Fatah.
Pakistan is an arrogant and hypocritical nation that is hated by its neighbours because it has been a thorn in their side since its creation.
Days ago it celebrated its independence day and soon after it celebrated the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, which has robbed that land of its independence.
Their jubilation was expected. The Taliban are the orphan children of Pakistan. Pakistan has brainwashed, trained and sheltered them from the moment they came out of their mothers' wombs.
Former Pakistan senator Afrasiab Khattak writes about this history in, "Taliban’s Legitimacy Crises":
Absolute majority of Taliban fighters originate from Afghan refugee families living in Pakistan for the last four decades. In fact most of them were born in Pakistan.
Journalist Sarah Chayes says that Pakistani officials even came up with the name Taliban in her article, "The Ides of August":
You may have heard that the Taliban first emerged in the early 1990s, in Kandahar. That is incorrect. I conducted dozens of conversations and interviews over the course of years, both with actors in the drama and ordinary people who watched events unfold in Kandahar and in Quetta, Pakistan. All of them said the Taliban first emerged in Pakistan.
The Taliban were a strategic project of the Pakistani military intelligence agency, the ISI. It even conducted market surveys in the villages around Kandahar, to test the label and the messaging. “Taliban” worked well.
The popular belief in Western liberal commentary that the Taliban are indigenous to Afghanistan and that explains their success in overthrowing the U.S. occupation couldn't be further from the truth.
The Taliban defeated the Washington war machine not because they represent a people's movement but because they waited it out. And their policy of waiting out the enemy would be impossible to execute without Pakistan's longstanding support.
Throughout the course of the war Pakistan's role in propping up the Taliban has been hidden in the Western media. This has contributed to public ignorance about the nature of the conflict and why it has taken so long to resolve.
After years of endless futility, Americans rightly lost patience with their dishonest leaders' inability to bring the war to a honourable conclusion.
Fighting the Taliban without targeting its sanctuaries in Pakistan proved to be a stupid strategy.
Taking out supply lines is a fundamental part of any successful war effort. So why was this not done in the war against the Taliban?
The only logical answer is that the United States was never interested in defeating the Taliban and developing the Afghan state.
So why did it invade Afghanistan?
The 9/11 justification continues to be touted but that wasn't the real reason why Washington invaded Afghanistan.
Who knows why the invasion happened. All we know for certain is that nothing substantial was achieved in two decades. Justice was not done, as Bush promised.
The cynical explanation seems to be the only plausible one. The U.S. aims in Afghanistan were to make money and circulate heroin profits in the international drug trade to shore up the Western private banking system which has been on the verge of collapse for years. Financial analyst Catherine Austin Fitts has discussed this in several of her interviews on various programs.
Questions about why Washington invaded Afghanistan and why it didn't pursue a total victory against the Taliban deserve to be answered.
Pakistan will also have a lot of answering to do for the destructive role it has played in Afghanistan in the last four decades. Its celebration of Taliban's takeover will be short-lived.
