Najmuddin A. Shaikh

Afghan security officials survey the damage of Tuesday's attacks
in Kabul, claimed by the Taliban.

The “spectacular” Taliban attack on numerous venues in Kabul and in three provinces seen in conjunction with the suspension of talks between the Americans and the Taliban in Qatar and the vehement Taliban rejection of talks with the Afghan government has reinforced the apprehensions of the Afghan people that peace and stability in Afghanistan remains a distant dream and exacerbates fears that the completion of the foreign troop withdrawal will not only bring economic hardship but chaotic security and political conditions. These apprehensions and fears are justified but, in my view, they should not have been accentuated by the Taliban attack.

When one examines the details of the Taliban attack what emerges is that the Taliban occupied buildings in the most closely guarded part of Kabul for more than 18 hours but did little material damage. On the government side the loss of life was limited to 8 members of the Afghan Security Forces and some 4 civilians. 36 Taliban, on the other hand lost their lives. The Taliban spokesman could term these admittedly well-coordinated attacks as a “remarkable achievement” but the government and NATO could even more validly claim that the response of the Afghan forces showed that they had acquired the professionalism to handle such attacks and defeat them with minimum loss of life. By and large this assertion could be accepted even though it is clear that the Afghan forces needed to rely on NATO helicopters and their weaponry to finally dislodge the insurgents from their vantage points.

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Najmuddin A. Shaikh
Strategic Culture Foundation

Pakistan's former intelligence chief Hamid Gul (Der Spiegel)

Pakistanis had entertained high hopes that when President Obama assumed office his policy towards South Asia would reflect what he had said in his campaign speeches and what his past experience of living in Pakistan, where his mother had worked for many years, had made clear to him: The situation in the region often called a “nuclear flashpoint” could improve only if a just and equitable solution was found for the issues-primarily the dispute over Kashmir-that bedevilled relations between India and Pakistan. Most importantly from the perspective of the immediate American priority in the region- the stabilising of Afghanistan and disrupting, dismantling and defeating the Al-Qaeda network and its allies-required that Pakistan should be free of other preoccupations and be able to focus on assisting the NATO effort in Afghanistan while at the same time taking the political and military action needed to quell the growth of extremism in Pakistan. This could only happen when Pakistan could rest easy with regard to the threat it perceived on its eastern border from its giant neighbour India.

It was therefore visualised that Obama would, as promised, appoint a special representative armed with plenipotentiary powers to mediate or at least facilitate an Indo-Pak dialogue and put America’s weight behind proposals that would resolve the Kashmir dispute. While this would, it was known, take some time there could be a development of trust and confidence between the two neighbours if Indo-Pak agreements were reached on the basis of existing understandings on such minor disputes as the Siachen Glacier and the Sir Creek and if greater cooperation could be established on the issue of terror that was a problem of common concern for Pakistan and India and indeed for the international community.

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