Pakistan has to play its cards right too. Many in AFG would bend over for dollars. The recently killed ttp commanders and zawahiri and hizb tahir leader were all sold and killed for dollars.
Pak-Afghan topics have been discussed to death many times. The inter linking of cultures of Pakistan and Afghanistan along with religious ties of muslims on both sides of the border is difficult to bring under control. There is a certain group that hated Pakistan when Government writ was tried to establish in FATA. Next, there is a struggle to get whole KPK merged into Afghanistan. With such an ideology, every step becomes a challenge.
The war that Zia started and then Musharraf replicated has affected Pakistan badly. Moreover there was hardly any checks and balances on weapons and human resource back then. Uzbeks, Tajiks, Egyptians and maybe Chechens were sitting with loaded guns in Lal masjid in 2007, thats the capital of Pakistan. Things are very different now but every Pakistani is paying the price. Afghanis say Pakistan meddled in their business, well Afghanistan itself had allowed fighters from over dozens countries to fight alongside Afghanis and this is still true today since TTP, AQ, IS and other factions are formed of international fighters.
India just cries wolf whenever an incident happens in J&K. Take a look at RAW's budget Vs ISI's budget, the difference is massively gigantic. Afghanis are sold easily for money and USA tried that too. Here on PDF, USA is always taken as a negative entity yet if USA starts giving visas, these members will be the first in the line to fly to USA. Understanding USA isnt easy but isnt difficult too. USA had money but wanted its own policy implemented for the party to get paid. That party maybe a Jirga or a village or a faction or a leader of a clan or anyone who negotiated with USA. However, sometimes one or both parties didnt keep their words and ended in failure and destruction.
Pakistan if led by one person, ends in disaster (Zia, Bhutto and others). Pakistan if led by a team of members, still ends in disaster. All the decisions in past were not always taken by one man at the top. and even if he took the decision, the ones below him made the circumstances hell as they disputed his ideas. In Govt, some wanted religious madrassahs, other didnt. Some felt madrassah as threat, other as recruiting ground. In 90's, these were sent in J&K, that stopped completely in 2000's, but by that time a strong foothold had been made by extremists into Pakistan. Extremism led to terrorism. This is what Pakistan has been a victim of. Now rehab centres and other methods have been introduced to bring extremist minds to normalcy.
Society is to blame too. The teachings of molvi, in fact sermons, incite emotions of hatred. In many homes, literacy rate is flat 10%, only one learned member in commerce or arts or science and technology. Education is what you have remembered after leaving school, college, university. When doctors in a hopsital in Sindh started to treat heat stroke patients in ramzan, protrests erupted that fasts are being broken before maghrib. where is common sense ? no but Islam says so. Kher I wont debate on Islam or any other religion. But saving one life is saving humanity. In Armed Forces also, issue arises, pilots want long beards but PAF won't allow them to sit in cockpits then.
I had an interaction with a captain in good old days, he looked normal but no one every found him social or normal, he had a short beard, considered himself above the rest due to his pure beliefs, while i was a standing attention in front of him one day, he said to me,
"Do you see me telling that my dxxx is longer than this road and i will fxxx your axx with it".
He continued,"you know why, coz I understand Islam". I kept quiet, it wasn't my place to say anything being a cadet.
His version of Islam was somehow found extremist by Army and he vanished after a few months, we kept asking where is Captian XYZ, no one uttered a word. It wasnt that he didnt like using vulgar words, he started giving sermons, throwing ideas of extremism and started grouping. Then there were the long bearded officers with an even longer tasbih found in their hand always. Those were best in creating politics out of nothing based on their views of Islam.
In my travelling with soldiers and later with civilian technicians, we used to eat out of the same plate or karahi as travelling to far flung areas of Pakistan for sake of providing communication. Once a molvi type JCO saw that a shia soldier was with us, he at once picked up a spoon and put curry in a separate plate for him so the rest of us "muslims" could eat in a single plate. In civilian life, same thing happened when a supervisor saw a christian technician (called him Choorra at his back) and said,
" Sir iss choorray k liye alag plate mein salan daal letay hain" . Later I formed my own team of misfits to complete the projects.
All this is taught at homes to us.
If you look at it from a neutral point of view, its the distorted views of religion that has taken many shapes in Afghanistan, but why blame religion, blame the individual's and faction's own perception of religion.
