No - and reread my post and who I point to.
The Afghan republic which was united under Zahid Shah with a semblance of control was easier to negotiate and get results to negotiations with than any of the fragmented factions that have come after it be it the Northern Alliance, Taliban or otherwise
Yeah and the day an Afghan republic gets slightly good economically and militarily, it’s the end of Pakistan. A centralized and internationally recognized afghan government might be easier to negotiate with but have fun dealing with them while you have Indians on the east and a potentially strong internationally recognized Afghanistan on the west and an opportunist snake Iran also on the west.
Pakistan can barely manage to keep a credible deterrent against Indians just image the trio (Afghanistan, Iran and india) all form a proper military alliance against us with strong armed forces. Even ghani regime conventionally was a threat to Pakistan because had they not been stuck in civil war, they had a 300k strong army with American backing and fairly decent equipment to give us a hard time on the western front.
And didn’t Afghanistan already under strong centralized republics try invading us 3 times and fund militancy in our areas.
With Taliban it’s ttp but they’re both rag tag militias which majority of the world is against.
With an Afghan republic it’s a professional army with strong alliances worldwide + a proxy group to help them.
We can even negotiate with Taliban if we play our cards right. Many TB ministers including their foreign minister has business in Pakistan and family living in Pakistan. You can’t have more leverage than this. Literally the TB higher ups survive off us. The TB being in the place they are today was cuz of us. Now with the iskp vs Taliban fight the amount of potential leverage we have in Afghanistan is unimaginable (look at kunar Taliban for example). Even ttp has many fault lines which can easily be exploited if our state wants. Just look at how they were under fazlullah’s time.
This is just using TB weaknesses as leverage. I haven’t even mentioned trade or other areas where we have unimaginable leverage.
The issue is Pakistan is full of incompetents in leadership. Civilian government has worse foreign policy than Taliban. Civilian government has ruined our relations always and they don’t even care about border areas. Even pti has horrible foreign policy. Our army loves playing with our country for their personal gains. We have no one truly looking out for Pakistani interests. The few that do are too few to make a difference and are sidelined. We are the only ones to blame. Even this TB project it couldn’t reaped many benefits had we played our cards right and actually put effort into our plan. Gen Hamid Gul was a great visionary person but unfortunately many don’t have the ability to understand him.
Like it or not, Taliban are our best bet in Afghanistan.
With the right strategy an Afghanistan with Taliban is an Afghanistan that’s our vassal.