Kasrkin
RETIRED MOD
- Joined
- Apr 10, 2008
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Also as already posted don't expect too much of a thanks from dear old Mullah Omar for allowing him free board and keep in Pakistan. The Taliban when in power were not actually that pro Pakistan then. You could not even sort out your border issues with them then.
Mullah Omar boarding in Pakistan all this time and not in Afghanistan is your point of view, not a fact, certainly not one you can prove with any amount of credibility. I don't disagree with your observation that the Taliban were hard enough to control for Pakistan, our advice on everything from the Buddha statues to harboring al-Qaeda was ignored. On the other hand I would like to point out that, technically speaking, there is no border ‘dispute’ between Pakistan and Afghanistan. There has been a long standing...resentment in the nationalistic Afghan psyche for the fact that Pakistan inherited the north western territories from the British. But there is no official or internationally recognized dispute (like in Kashmir for instance) because there is no legal basis for disputing the ownership of sovereign Pakistani territory which was rightfully and democratically inherited from British over-sight, nor was there any timeline attached to the Durrand agreement. Therefore despite ample hostility the Afghan nationalist governments have never even tried to approach or raise the matter through international or impartial forums or mediation. What the more nationalist/pro-Soviet/pro-Indian Afghans did do over the decades however was to try and instigate rebellion in Pakistan’s border regions (Bajour comes to mind in the 60s) but obviously that didn’t work, but there was no serious confrontation between the Pak/Afghan government forces mainly because of the semi-autonomous nature of that territory where the army was rarely required for national defense or policing duties.
So when the Taliban were in charge, were they refusing to acknowledge Pakistan territorial integrity? Not really. Would a legally binding ‘official’ agreement with them have been possible? Probably. But it is kinda hard to see how a need for that would’ve been felt without incredible hindsight. If such an agreement had been formalized with the Taliban regime (which barely a couple of countries including Pakistan recognized, and the Northern Alliance now in charge of Afghanistan sure as hell didn’t) would it have been of any use to us now? Hell NO! The NA, bristling with anti-Pakistani feelings, would’ve torn it up calling it ‘dictation over Afghanistan through proxy’ and what not.
Okay that was a pretty long (and probably unnecessary) deliberation but I hope it put in a little more prospective.