A familiar pattern in almost 14 years of war in Afghanistan is repeating itself as Pakistan’s ongoing inability to let go of supporting the Taliban again threatens chances for peace.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani was the latest leader to vent his frustration at the trend, saying Monday after a series of bloody attacks by the Islamist extremist group in Kabul that it’s time for Islamabad to cut the cord to its terrorist proxy.
“Pakistan still remains a venue and ground for gatherings from which mercenaries send us a message of war,” Ghani said in a televised address. “We can no longer tolerate to see our people bleeding in a war exported and imposed from outside.”
Ghani, who has pursued a risky path of Pakistan-brokered peace talks with the Taliban since taking office nearly a year ago, said his country’s future relationship with Islamabad would depend on whether Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government can keep its promise to hold the Taliban accountable.
“Now the time has come for him to prove it,” he said.
Ghani spoke after a weekend of bloody attacks that killed more than 60 people in the worst terrorist violence Kabul has seen in years. Among the dead was a U.S. Army Master Sgt. Peter A. McKenna Jr. of Bristol, Rhode Island.
Secretary of State John Kerry spoke by phone Monday with Ghani in an effort to defuse the latest flare-up of frustration with Pakistan and urged the two countries to continue to work together against the Taliban, spokesman John Kirby said.
“Now is the time for the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan to work together to achieve the shared goal of defeating violent extremists, the urgent interest of both countries to eliminate safe havens and to reduce the operational capacities of the Taliban on both sides of the border,” Kirby said.
“We certainly want to see the political reconciliation process move forward. We want to see peace.”
Pakistan’s support for the Taliban has dogged U.S. and allied efforts to rebuild a stable Afghanistan since coalition forces ejected the Islamist extremist group from power at the end of 2001. Over more than a decade, even as the main U.S. supply lines ran through the country and U.S. drones used its airbases to launch attacks on Islamist extremists, Pakistan continued to shelter the Taliban’s leaders and allowed safe havens for its fighters.
Former Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, who had been the Pentagon’s point man on relations with Pakistan until his retirement in September 2011, vented his frustration with the relationship in his last hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“The support of terrorism is part of their national strategy. That’s got to fundamentally shift,” Mullen said.
Just months earlier, the “frenemies” nature of the relationship blew up when U.S. Navy SEALs killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in a May 2, 2011, raid in Abbottabad, a military garrison town just 35 miles from Pakistan’s capital. In the aftermath of the raid, it was revealed that bin Laden had been hiding there for years, and repercussions over how much — and whether — Pakistani officials were aware of his presence sent the alliance between the two countries spiraling to its lowest level since the 9/11 attacks bin Laden had ordered.
Sharif had pledged a new approach after a bloody Dec. 16 attack by the group’s Pakistani branch on a military school in Peshawar. But the revelation late last month that longtime Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar had died in Pakistan in 2013, and that the group’s leadership had met in that country to choose Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour as his successor, threw the peace process in turmoil and raised questions of Islamabad’s sincerity in eliminating the extremists’ safe havens.
