In earlier posts I referred you to Steve Coll's marvelous book, 'Ghost Wars' and the evidence would, indeed, seem to suggest that the Saudis, the Pakistani ISI and the American CIA spawned their "little" Frankenstein that is the Taliban.(1) Yes, "Uncle Sam" put the Taliban into power and perhaps it was because the CIA wasn't allowed to continue their exploitation of the poppy crop, perhaps it was the Taleban not giving Unocal the green light to build their pipleline through Afghanistan, perhaps, "Uncle Sam" was just suffering from a change of mood, whatevever, it was "Uncle Sam" who decided that the "merry" mullahs had to be removed and here he is now, talking to "moderate" Taliban but harrassing and harrying the "radicals", along with 'al-Qaida' on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Does anyone really still believe the nonsense that Washington spouts out? Well, apparently John Hutton, the British Defence Secretary, does and he is offering "Blighty's" full backing to the US in her military objectives in the region. Military objectives that, according to Hutton, must now have an equal focus on both Afghanistan and Pakistan.(2)
Do any of you actually get the picture here? War and instability in a country with a population of about twenty six million has just officially spread to a nuclear power with a population of some 140 million. It is surely time to realise that these people are not just a danger to the innocent women and children who they are killing in the region, they are a serious danger to all of us and, while the reasons for their "little game" is difficult to ascertain, certainly more of a threat to many more people than 'al-Qaida' or the Taliban are, ever were or are ever likely to be.
1 http://thediplomatabroad.blogspot.com/search?q=ghost+wars
2 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/29/pakistan-afgan-border-foreign-policy
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