What is incomprehensible is why the US has allowed itself to be browbeaten to literally give Pakistan `high table` in dealing with Afghanistan. For months, US businessmen and officials were harassed, shadowed and intimidated by ISI on flimsy pretexts. A media propaganda was whipped up across Pakistan against the US.

The Army led this campaign after the Kerry-Lugar Bill was passed by making its anger public. The US became the most hated country in Pakistan, leaving India trailing. A quite devious campaign was initiated in the media as well as diplomatic circles that Pakistan would follow an independent course of strategic policy in the region, may be with the help of China. The US began to be projected as the problem and not solution. Demand for the ouster and exit of the US forces became quite loud as the Obama administration dithered and whimpered on its Afpak policy.

The Obama administration, after the nightmare of body-bags returning in increasing numbers began to haunt them at a time when the domestic ratings for the President were plummeting, fell for such a wily trick. The US had its compulsions. President Barak Obama had no stomach for a long-term stay in Afghanistan. It wanted some semblance of stability in the country and a pro-US head in Kabul. After abusing Hamid Karzai as the most corrupt ruler east of Suez, Washington decided to live with him in Kabul after he managed to win his people’s mandate against all odds.  A `stable` Afghanistan is critical to the US strategic objective in Asia—to control oil and resource-rich Central Asia, and effectively checkmate Russia and China.

Since the US forces failed to stem the Taliban tide, primarily because Pakistan played its devious games, a decision was taken to talk to the `good` Taliban and take on the `bad` Taliban. This was a complete turnaround of the US policies pursued at great cost to the US exchequer and millions of people in the region.

The only problem, the Washington strategists quickly realized that there was no such animal called the `good Taliban`. So they settled on the Pakistan-controlled Taliban and  quite conveniently labelled them `good` and hosted them in island resorts thousands of miles away from the killing fields of Afghanistan.

For Pakistan, nothing better could have happened at a time when every one had declared it a failed state. Not only was Washington ready to pump in billions of dollars for arms, it was also quite accommodating about Islamabad’s flirtation with terrorist groups of all hues. The Obama administration offered Pakistan ` a driver’s seat` in Kabul and a `strategic dialogue` in Washington and promised to keep the `India factor` in the region in check. On the face of it, all loose ends have been tied up neatly, at least for the Obama administration which, in its desperate attempt to exit Afghanistan from July 2011 onwards, chose to overlook the lurking dangers.

Let us begin with the biggest danger of them all, Osama bin Laden. The entire exercise of military intervention in Afghanistan was propelled by the September 11, 2001 attacks and the imperative need for the United States to take revenge on al Qaida and its allied groups like the Taliban for the disastrous attack on the soul of America. The Taliban was routed and al Qaida was substantially decimated but neither of them was defeated in any manner.

So for the next seven years, the US pursued the singular policy of hunting down the leadership of al Qaida and its allies with the primary objective of defeating the terrorist enterprise headquartered in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Enormous amount of resources, and funds to the tune of over $10 billion, were expended on Islamabad but with zero gain. Barring a few departmental heads of al Qaida and the Taliban, the top leadership was protected and sheltered by Pakistan quite effectively.

The Pakistan’s failure to help the US in its mission was considered a failure of `skill and will`; however, in reality, it was much more than that. It was one of the many deceptions that Islamabad played on Washington.

It was a clear cut policy of Pakistan Army not to help the US find bin Laden or any of his top aides. It was not a question of will or skill. Likewise, it was very much the army’s policy to shelter the Taliban chief Mullah Omar and its leadership council in Quetta and Karachi and not let the Americans go anywhere nears them.

Now the Obama administration has engaged the protectors of terrorist groups inimical to the US to bring about some semblance of stability in the region. Since Pakistan is the guardian angel of all terrorist and extremist groups in the region, it makes sense to engage it to control its brood groups.  The problem is it won’t because if all terrorist groups were to vanish from the region, Pakistan will find itself abandoned by its present benefactors.

This is what the strategists in Washington refuse to accept. For Pakistan, terrorists groups are like a blue-ribbon insurance, ensuring a regular, handsome return in terms of money and position. Pakistan as a nation-state as it exists today will wilt away if it were to abandon terrorism.

So where does it leave the US and its homeland security concerns. The terrorist alliances which targeted the US in 2001 and thereafter, and have vowed to defeat it at any cost are today sheltered in Pakistan with the active assistance of its army and intelligence agencies. The threat from these groups to its homeland has not disappeared; on the contrary, it has only increased manifold since September 2001.  Terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Tayyeba today run Jihadi BPOs from Pakistan’s main cities, facilitating the recruitment and training of scores of western youth in their various training camps. Not that Pakistan is not aware of these centres but it has allowed them to function with the objective of creating a network of terrorist cells beyond its borders, thereby not attracting attention or punitive action in case of future terrorist attacks.

There are other pitfalls which the Obama advisers seem to have deliberately or otherwise missed. One is Pakistan’s obsession with driving India out of Afghanistan and developing a `strategic depth` there, both of which, it is quite clear to any sensible person, will drive the region deeper into a vortex of violence. Second is Pakistan’s effort to ensure that the Afghan National Army never becomes fully functional, leaving the government perpetually at the mercy of violent Islamic brigands. For Pakistan, a fully operational and capable Afghan National Army, predominantly Pashtun can become a potential threat on its west
ern borders in the future. Pakistan’s game plan therefore is to make sure that Afghanistan becomes another extension of its tribal or the Frontier areas, giving it absolute control over Kabul.

Since it is abundantly clear that there is a method in the madness in what Pakistan is doing, the Obama administration’s policy changes in the recent times leave serious questions about the depth of its strategic vision and policies in the region.  Is the super power, losing its edge?