Senior Taliban leader rejects Pakistan's western border

[hari sud]

Senior Taliban leader is encouraging the creation of Pakhtunistan.

 

[VkdIndian]

Yet for some reason all the blame for the crisis, for both during, and after the Soviet Invasion, goes to Pakistan.

Not all the blame. Just a part of it.

My reply does not seek to morally justify supporting the Taliban, even then we don't know to what extent, or supporting the Mujahideen.

Taliban was a creation of Paksitan. PKaistan was so taken-in by strategic depth that they overlooked everything else. They did US bidding without considering the repercussions at the end of the conflict. Blame the world if you want to, but that world wasn’t going to face an unstable Afghan, you were. That should have been the driving factor in all policy decisions.

In summary though, given the history, the financial situations, larger priorities to the east, Pakistan was in its full right to interfere as did the other nations. The reason Pakistan gets all the blame is because the Taliban won the conflict.

Paksiatn wanted Taliban to win and they have won. Now what?

Taliban ideology was partly conceived and propagated by ISI under the establishment. When this group was being created it was presumed that it is only for Afghan soil. It wasn’t factored in that this might seep into KPK and Baloch areas.

Moreover, Zia started the thought process of using non-state actors as a tool which we know now has backfired.

All these aspects appear to be due to incorrect planning and strategising. Those who made these have to take the blame.

The list of poor foresight is very long. How come most of the decisions have backfired against PKsiatn?

Afghan culture was well known to your planners. What were they thinking when they double crossed the US? What was their plan after US was made to leave?

History always judges, based on the outcome. The outcome doesn’t show anything positive for Paksiatn in this matter.

 

[AZMwi]

unite Pakistan and Afghanistan into one country and call it Khorasan

I will prefer Taliban any day of the week over the corrupt liberal secular homosexual elite of Pakistan

 

[surmabhopali]

Kabul:— Senior Taliban leader refuses to accept the Durand Line as a border between Pakistan & Afghanistan.

— Sohail Shaheen, Taliban spokes -person, says the Durand Line is just a "line", not a border.

— Sohail Shaheen also says TTP is Pakistan's problem, not Afghanistan & Pakistan must deal with its problems.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1678751091314286593

https://twitter.com/x/status/1679623157668257792

So it means problem is still there .

 

[El Sidd]

Go ask Iranians if they want unification with Afghans. Go ask Central Asian countries. Go ask countries besides Pakistan that have loads of Afghan immigrants and see how they like their behavior there.

No thanks. Afghanistan should be dismantled. Afghans should be eliminated.

Iranians are racist to pretty much everyone beyond the Persian heartland.

Well Pakistan cannot help you in dismantling or eliminating Afghanistan. Canadians are alone in their support for war in Afghanistan.

 

[Lincoln]

Not all the blame. Just a part of it.

Taliban was a creation of Paksitan. PKaistan was so taken-in by strategic depth that they overlooked everything else. They did US bidding without considering the repercussions at the end of the conflict. Blame the world if you want to, but that world wasn’t going to face an unstable Afghan, you were. That should have been the driving factor in all policy decisions.

Paksiatn wanted Taliban to win and they have won. Now what?

Taliban ideology was partly conceived and propagated by ISI under the establishment. When this group was being created it was presumed that it is only for Afghan soil. It wasn’t factored in that this might seep into KPK and Baloch areas.

Moreover, Zia started the thought process of using non-state actors as a tool which we know now has backfired.

All these aspects appear to be due to incorrect planning and strategising. Those who made these have to take the blame.

The list of poor foresight is very long. How come most of the decisions have backfired against PKsiatn?

Afghan culture was well known to your planners. What were they thinking when they double crossed the US? What was their plan after US was made to leave?

History always judges, based on the outcome. The outcome doesn’t show anything positive for Paksiatn in this matter.

I will try and reply to this in parts although the answers to these is already there in my reply. I will try and summarize it.

Taliban was a creation of Paksitan. PKaistan was so taken-in by strategic depth that they overlooked everything else. They did US bidding without considering the repercussions at the end of the conflict. Blame the world if you want to, but that world wasn’t going to face an unstable Afghan, you were. That should have been the driving factor in all policy decisions.

Wrong, they did calculate it in most likeliness. Like I said, Afghanistan has shown hostilities and threatened Pakistan's territorial integrity since 1947, and we were going to face the unstable Afghanistan, yes, which is why Pakistan had more right than any other country to interfere.
So, my point is that the Taliban might have been the least expansionist group and so they were seen as ideal, moreover a stable Afghanistan supported by the NATO allies would be seen undoubtedly as a larger threat given the history their history since 1947.

Paksiatn wanted Taliban to win and they have won. Now what?

Taliban ideology was partly conceived and propagated by ISI under the establishment. When this group was being created it was presumed that it is only for Afghan soil. It wasn’t factored in that this might seep into KPK and Baloch areas.

Nationalist elements have always existed. Where there is ethnicity, there is nationalism, it's not something that has seeped in recently, only that armed insurgencies have increased due to the war in Afghanistan. The important thing is that it does not go beyond a certain level. Also there is no evidence that Taliban was conceived by the ISI under any form. The group after its formation could've come under radar of the agency, that's something I can agree with reasonably.

Moreover, Zia started the thought process of using non-state actors as a tool which we know now has backfired.

Again, at one point you're claiming to say Pakistan takes partial blame but here you're putting the entire blame. It was not Zia who conceived this idea. It was the CIA and ISI, and even then these two agencies were not the first to conceive this idea. Afghanistan, on the basis of ethnicity, was the first to use proxies in the region in the 20th century. They used proxies throughout from 1947 to 1970.
So, my point is that it's quite likely ISI and CIA took a page from Afghanistan's own book, you can quite say they got backfired as their own ideas were used against them.

All these aspects appear to be due to incorrect planning and strategising. Those who made these have to take the blame.

The list of poor foresight is very long. How come most of the decisions have backfired against PKsiatn?

Again, we don't know if it was a decision that truly backfired. Who knows, a non-chaotic, stable Afghanistan would've been perhaps a bigger threat.

Afghan culture was well known to your planners. What were they thinking when they double crossed the US? What was their plan after US was made to leave?

History always judges, based on the outcome. The outcome doesn’t show anything positive for Paksiatn in this matter.

Sometimes there's no positive outcome possible, given their history of initiating hostilities with Pakistan. In that case, you go for what you think would be the best outcome. You see one side of the coin wherein it took many, many years to obtain an outcome on the crisis with a single group taking helm, and it resulted in proxies and terrorism. It doesn't look good. But stability at the hands of this group may be better as they will not be comparable to Pakistan's defense apparatus, but at the same time stable enough to put conflicts and chaos to end.
This seems like a bad outcome unless you truly evaluate what Pakistan and Afghanistan's relation would've been like had none of this chaos and crisis not ensued (important to mention again, this crisis and chaos is the ultimate causing factor of their destruction, and stems from their own internal problems, Pakistan has nothing to do with these civil wars, or Soviet invasions, or those revolutions, interference after it started does not equate to causation), a stable and militarily strong Afghanistan would still not be on good terms with Pakistan and be a threat over the Durand Line. These are factors you have to consider.

 

[HttpError]

If China does not accept McMohan Line then why should the Afghan’s accept the Durand Line. The latter divides the Pakhtoon people. It is a legacy of the British Raj.

Pakistan neither recognizes Durand line, Pakistan claims Kandahar to be our provincial capital for Waziristan. Afghanistan must return us Kandahar, Jalalabad and other surrounding areas.

Until we are not united by these cities which were illegally given to Afghanistan by the British Raj there can be no peace between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

 

[ThunderCat]

Iranians are racist to pretty much everyone beyond the Persian heartland.

Well Pakistan cannot help you in dismantling or eliminating Afghanistan. Canadians are alone in their support for war in Afghanistan.

Canadians have little against Afghans since they don't have too much experience with Afghans. If they did, they'd dislike them.

But we Pakistanis hate them to the soul and want them out of our country.

 

[VkdIndian]

Like I said, Afghanistan has shown hostilities and threatened Pakistan's territorial integrity since 1947, and we were going to face the unstable Afghanistan, yes, which is why Pakistan had more right than any other country to interfere.

First of all, I would like to thank you for keeping the discussion civil which generally is not the case here. Within a couple of difference in opinions, cow dung, urine, financial status of nations start flying at each other.

Now coming to the subject, your analysis and mine has probably reached a state where the differences aren’t likely to go away. It appears to be a question of perspective and how we view the events.

Just because Afghanistan was hostile, Paksiatn didn’t have the right to meddle in ways that it did. It presumed that the situation can be easily turned in it’s favour. That was the first and biggest mistake in a series of other ones that followed over the years.

Why did Paksiatn allow CIA’s bidding to be the primary driver? Today US may be wanting something similar from India w.r.t China. But India hasn’t allowed that. Why? Because it assesses that it will lose the driving seat to handle the situation the way it wants.

The policy decisions were Paksiatn’s own and have proven to be a faulty. Most of them. I do wonder if there was something which was not.

Yes, hindsight is always 20-20. It could be bad luck or anything else, the decisions would still be assessed and graded as failed ones or successful. History is never kind.

Again, at one point you're claiming to say Pakistan takes partial blame but here you're putting the entire blame.

When I say partial, it meant not all, but quite a lot. Other players also muddled in but it was mainly Paksiatn all the way. Others needed Paskiatn’s soil, permission and willingness to meddle.

was the first to use proxies in the region in the 20th century.

Use of proxies has been in vogue for ages. There is nothing new in that. There are many instances since ancient times.

But, it is the scale of material support and training that was taken to a different level by quite a few rulers in Paksiatn. Zia was the first one who gave it a real push. It was also tried in Kashmir against India.

Musharraf has accepted it in many interviews. Even Imran accepted it and said that he is now trying to dismantle those policies. It is not for nothing that Paksiatn became infamous in this regard across the world. Today, it is itself a big victim of that.

Afganistan’s bad relations with Paksiatn and it’s non-acceptance of Durand line didn’t give anyone a right to meddle into their internal affairs. After meddling, if the outcome wasn’t as envisaged then blame has to be taken by those who meddled.

Hypothetical scenarios of what Afghan would have been has many other possibilities. Not just the one that shows them as hostile neighbours.

There is a possibility that a powerful and democratic ruler may have resolved the issue by dialogue. What about not having millions of refugees on your soil which is affecting your own economy and stability?

It appears that AF-Pak policies were always drafted with just the means in sight without thinking of the end. That is the reason, inspite of getting favourable outcomes many times, it turns into a loss within a short time when realities weigh-in.

DG ISI having a hot cuppa with a smirk at Kabul airport after US withdrawal is the latest in that series.

 

[Kingdom come]

DG ISI having a hot cuppa with a smirk at Kabul airport after US withdrawal is the latest in that series

THier will be a part 2