Solomon2
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How? Because your "friend" told you so?i know for sure that both used to have US support
US & Pakistan Dispute and Tensions over Haqqani group
- Thread starter Respect4Respect01
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karan.1970
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LOL... Where did I attack the poster buddy..?? just asked if he thought up all that himself or if it was based on some article/paper etc..
But this was rich coming from someone who was just going ballistic on VCheng only y'day
Imran Akhtar
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Why Tension Increases in Pak-US Relations?
By Sajjad Shaukat
Since May 2, this year, strained relations already existed between Pakistan and the United States when without informing Islamabad, US commandos killed Osama Bin Laden in a covert military operation. Afterwards, tension started increasing in Pak-US relations as America continued its pressure tactics on Pakistan in wake of drone attacks on Pak tribal areas, while setting aside parliaments resolution in this regard. Taking congnisance of the situation, Pakistans civil and military leadership rejected American demands to take action against the Haqqani network. Under the pretext of Haqqani network, the US wants to fulfill its multiple aims...
Why Tension Increases in Pak-US Relations?... Original post..
By Sajjad Shaukat
Since May 2, this year, strained relations already existed between Pakistan and the United States when without informing Islamabad, US commandos killed Osama Bin Laden in a covert military operation. Afterwards, tension started increasing in Pak-US relations as America continued its pressure tactics on Pakistan in wake of drone attacks on Pak tribal areas, while setting aside parliaments resolution in this regard. Taking congnisance of the situation, Pakistans civil and military leadership rejected American demands to take action against the Haqqani network. Under the pretext of Haqqani network, the US wants to fulfill its multiple aims...
Why Tension Increases in Pak-US Relations?... Original post..
Pksecurity
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The current wave of Pakistan-bashing is not without a reasons. There are plans to discredit Pakistan and create enabling environments for India to take over Afghanistan after the US departure. Pakistan has been used beyond its capacity and its services are no more required by the US.
The infamous September 13 attack on the Ring of Steel in Kabul is no different from the previous attacks but, understandably, it has brought tremors in international relations. As anticipated by some cynics, the alliance of 10 years forged to fight terrorism is falling apart, with allies talking tough to each other, pointing fingers and frothing at the mouth. They are practically at each other’s throats. This attack and its after-shocks in the form of bad-mouthing by the allies, has brought home a very clear message to the world; many thousand lives were lost for nothing and precious years feeding whole one generation on terror-fear have been wasted. And one trillion dollars of US taxpayers’ hard-income have gone down the drain. Today the Taliban, which the world wanted destroyed, are more formidable than 2011. They will gain further strength from the present stand-off between the US and Pakistan. Al Qaeda sitting on the fence is jubilant as it never expected to realize the desired results so easily. The US obliged al Qaeda by blindly walking into mouse trap called Afghanistan.
The attack which was carried out with operational excellence paralyzing US security apparatus in Afghanistan for 20 hours carries two distinct stamps; it was a Taliban job executed by a few fighters and it could not have been carried out so brilliantly without inside help from the US Embassy. Instead of admitting security and intelligence failure, the US has needlessly started looking for a scapegoat. A senior U.S. official -- Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- has publicly fingered the Haqqani network as a tool of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency. What's surprising is that this is particularly newsworthy: ISI's contacts with the Haqqanis, like so many other intelligence outfits, have been an open secret for years. What's different, of course, is that the latest Haqqani attack was not on American forces deployed in Afghanistan but on the U.S. embassy in Kabul -- and that the U.S. government possesses unambiguous evidence of official Pakistani complicity in last week's assault.
But the ISI has always been in the limelight or was being seen in bad light by the media. For every act of secession or violence in remote Indian States called Seven Sisters or the Red Corridor or Jammu & Kashmir, finger was invariably pointed in ISI direction. There was a time of sustained campaign against ISI that it was felt that ISI could even be behind earthquakes, epidemics, poverty, caste system injustices and even broken marriages in India. If ISI is helping Afghans fight USSR, it was an excellent force, if it was working to protect Pakistan and its security interests; it is branded as a rogue agency.
The current campaign against ISI has nothing to do with its alleged role in Taliban attack on Kabul and even the US knows that. It is basically a war between ISI and RAW of India for their respective country’s post-US influence in Afghanistan in which the US is siding with RAW when it no longer needs ISI in its WoT. Such wars between the two agencies are not a new phenomenon.
According to Council on Foreign Relations, RAW set up two covert groups of its own in mid-80s, Counter Intelligence Team-X (CIT-X) and Counter Intelligence Team-J (CIT-J), the first targeting Pakistan in general and the second directed at Khalistani groups. The two groups were responsible for carrying out terrorist operations inside Pakistan . Indian journalist and associate editor of Frontline magazine, Praveen Swami, writes that a "low-grade but steady campaign of bombings in major Pakistani cities, notably Karachi and Lahore" was carried out.
According to Council on Foreign Relations, RAW is also accused of supporting Sindhi nationalists demanding a separate state, as well as Siraikis calling for a partition of Pakistan's Punjab to create a separate Siraiki state. India denies these charges. However, experts point out that India has supported insurgents in Pakistan's Balochistan, as well as anti-Pakistan forces in Afghanistan. But some experts say India no longer does this. Pakistan is suspicious of India's influence in Afghanistan, which it views as a threat to its own interests in the region. Experts say although it is very likely that India has active intelligence gathering in Afghanistan, it is difficult to say whether it is also involved in covert operations.
As against allegations that ISI has contacts with Haqqani Network fighting NATO forces in Afghanistan, RAW has contacts with Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) fighting Pakistani state in Swat, South Waziristan and elsewhere in the tribal region. RAW is many steps ahead of ISI in this respect. It is fanning and fuelling insurgency in Balochistan and FATA and is funding and actually equipping TTP and Baloch insurgents. Some target-killers arrested in recent Karachi unrest confessed to have received training from RAW. No wonder, some call Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan as Tehreek-e-RAWliban Pakistan.
Some pundits argue that Haqqani network, based in North Waziristan, has never attacked an official target in Pakistan - further evidence of its collusive relationship with that country's security services. When their struggle is focused on fighting foreign occupation forces and their collaborators including India, why should they insist the network attack Pakistan which has no role in Kabul? By this flawed logic, TTP fighting Pakistan and having killed 35000 civilians and 3000 security personnel provide collusive relationship with RAW and CIA. And mind you, this fight is taking place right inside Pakistan. By all definitions, TTP and Baloch insurgency is proxy war being fought by RAW inside Pakistan. Major objectives of this proxy war are keeping Pakistan away from Afghanistan to give India decisive role in Kabul, keeping China away from Gwadar-China energy corridor and depriving Pakistan from natural resources of Afghanistan.
After the decision of drawdown from Afghanistan, the U.S. calculus has changed. It will now no longer need Pakistan. It will certainly need India to inherit Afghanistan from the NATO forces to keep India-supported ethnic minority in power. This explains why a sustained campaign was launched some months ago to defame and discredit Pakistan’s security establishment which, in their eyes, is major hurdle against India’s foothold in Kabul.
According to Foreign Policy, Pakistan is no ally when it comes to the endgame in Afghanistan -- and that plays the role of spoiler in America's relationship with the most potentially important rising power of the 21st: century: India. These developments raise the ugly but necessary question of what a completely different - and adversarial -- U.S. approach to Pakistan would look like, one that dispenses of the underlying logic that the countries are allies at all.
The approach bares the US designs of delivering Kabul to India. The divorce papers are ready, which apparently were written quite a long ago. According to the aforementioned article published by Foreign Policy, such an approach would
Require the United States not to leave Afghanistan to Pakistan's designs but to keep a significant deployment of U.S. troops in place to deter and defeat Islamabad's efforts to renew the sphere of influence it enjoyed there when its Taliban allies were in power.
Call for the CIA to cease cooperating with ISI, which it continues to rely on for access to the region, on the grounds that our fundamental goals are incompatible.
Suggest doubling down on US relationship with India, including supporting a greater Indian strategic, political, and economic presence in Afghanistan which Americans think, would be welcomed by most Afghans as a stabilizing force in a troubled country.
Require the US to convince Beijing not to fill the vacuum left by the withdrawal of American patronage towards Pakistan; China would need to pursue approaches that complement American’s rather than continuing to provide unqualified support to its “revisionist, increasingly radicalized ally”.
This approach would also require American leaders to take a hard look at their own history in the region. The United States walked away from Afghanistan following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 and spent the 1990s sanctioning Pakistan, helping to spawn the anti-Americanism that pervades the officer corps and broader public today.
The article wonders if the Americans are prepared to walk away and sanction Pakistan again, and if they do, are they prepared to deal with the consequences? Or have the current terms of the relationship so manifestly failed that they have no choice?
National Security: Pakistan-bashing: A prelude to deliver Afghanistan to India
The infamous September 13 attack on the Ring of Steel in Kabul is no different from the previous attacks but, understandably, it has brought tremors in international relations. As anticipated by some cynics, the alliance of 10 years forged to fight terrorism is falling apart, with allies talking tough to each other, pointing fingers and frothing at the mouth. They are practically at each other’s throats. This attack and its after-shocks in the form of bad-mouthing by the allies, has brought home a very clear message to the world; many thousand lives were lost for nothing and precious years feeding whole one generation on terror-fear have been wasted. And one trillion dollars of US taxpayers’ hard-income have gone down the drain. Today the Taliban, which the world wanted destroyed, are more formidable than 2011. They will gain further strength from the present stand-off between the US and Pakistan. Al Qaeda sitting on the fence is jubilant as it never expected to realize the desired results so easily. The US obliged al Qaeda by blindly walking into mouse trap called Afghanistan.
The attack which was carried out with operational excellence paralyzing US security apparatus in Afghanistan for 20 hours carries two distinct stamps; it was a Taliban job executed by a few fighters and it could not have been carried out so brilliantly without inside help from the US Embassy. Instead of admitting security and intelligence failure, the US has needlessly started looking for a scapegoat. A senior U.S. official -- Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- has publicly fingered the Haqqani network as a tool of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency. What's surprising is that this is particularly newsworthy: ISI's contacts with the Haqqanis, like so many other intelligence outfits, have been an open secret for years. What's different, of course, is that the latest Haqqani attack was not on American forces deployed in Afghanistan but on the U.S. embassy in Kabul -- and that the U.S. government possesses unambiguous evidence of official Pakistani complicity in last week's assault.
But the ISI has always been in the limelight or was being seen in bad light by the media. For every act of secession or violence in remote Indian States called Seven Sisters or the Red Corridor or Jammu & Kashmir, finger was invariably pointed in ISI direction. There was a time of sustained campaign against ISI that it was felt that ISI could even be behind earthquakes, epidemics, poverty, caste system injustices and even broken marriages in India. If ISI is helping Afghans fight USSR, it was an excellent force, if it was working to protect Pakistan and its security interests; it is branded as a rogue agency.
The current campaign against ISI has nothing to do with its alleged role in Taliban attack on Kabul and even the US knows that. It is basically a war between ISI and RAW of India for their respective country’s post-US influence in Afghanistan in which the US is siding with RAW when it no longer needs ISI in its WoT. Such wars between the two agencies are not a new phenomenon.
According to Council on Foreign Relations, RAW set up two covert groups of its own in mid-80s, Counter Intelligence Team-X (CIT-X) and Counter Intelligence Team-J (CIT-J), the first targeting Pakistan in general and the second directed at Khalistani groups. The two groups were responsible for carrying out terrorist operations inside Pakistan . Indian journalist and associate editor of Frontline magazine, Praveen Swami, writes that a "low-grade but steady campaign of bombings in major Pakistani cities, notably Karachi and Lahore" was carried out.
According to Council on Foreign Relations, RAW is also accused of supporting Sindhi nationalists demanding a separate state, as well as Siraikis calling for a partition of Pakistan's Punjab to create a separate Siraiki state. India denies these charges. However, experts point out that India has supported insurgents in Pakistan's Balochistan, as well as anti-Pakistan forces in Afghanistan. But some experts say India no longer does this. Pakistan is suspicious of India's influence in Afghanistan, which it views as a threat to its own interests in the region. Experts say although it is very likely that India has active intelligence gathering in Afghanistan, it is difficult to say whether it is also involved in covert operations.
As against allegations that ISI has contacts with Haqqani Network fighting NATO forces in Afghanistan, RAW has contacts with Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) fighting Pakistani state in Swat, South Waziristan and elsewhere in the tribal region. RAW is many steps ahead of ISI in this respect. It is fanning and fuelling insurgency in Balochistan and FATA and is funding and actually equipping TTP and Baloch insurgents. Some target-killers arrested in recent Karachi unrest confessed to have received training from RAW. No wonder, some call Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan as Tehreek-e-RAWliban Pakistan.
Some pundits argue that Haqqani network, based in North Waziristan, has never attacked an official target in Pakistan - further evidence of its collusive relationship with that country's security services. When their struggle is focused on fighting foreign occupation forces and their collaborators including India, why should they insist the network attack Pakistan which has no role in Kabul? By this flawed logic, TTP fighting Pakistan and having killed 35000 civilians and 3000 security personnel provide collusive relationship with RAW and CIA. And mind you, this fight is taking place right inside Pakistan. By all definitions, TTP and Baloch insurgency is proxy war being fought by RAW inside Pakistan. Major objectives of this proxy war are keeping Pakistan away from Afghanistan to give India decisive role in Kabul, keeping China away from Gwadar-China energy corridor and depriving Pakistan from natural resources of Afghanistan.
After the decision of drawdown from Afghanistan, the U.S. calculus has changed. It will now no longer need Pakistan. It will certainly need India to inherit Afghanistan from the NATO forces to keep India-supported ethnic minority in power. This explains why a sustained campaign was launched some months ago to defame and discredit Pakistan’s security establishment which, in their eyes, is major hurdle against India’s foothold in Kabul.
According to Foreign Policy, Pakistan is no ally when it comes to the endgame in Afghanistan -- and that plays the role of spoiler in America's relationship with the most potentially important rising power of the 21st: century: India. These developments raise the ugly but necessary question of what a completely different - and adversarial -- U.S. approach to Pakistan would look like, one that dispenses of the underlying logic that the countries are allies at all.
The approach bares the US designs of delivering Kabul to India. The divorce papers are ready, which apparently were written quite a long ago. According to the aforementioned article published by Foreign Policy, such an approach would
Require the United States not to leave Afghanistan to Pakistan's designs but to keep a significant deployment of U.S. troops in place to deter and defeat Islamabad's efforts to renew the sphere of influence it enjoyed there when its Taliban allies were in power.
Call for the CIA to cease cooperating with ISI, which it continues to rely on for access to the region, on the grounds that our fundamental goals are incompatible.
Suggest doubling down on US relationship with India, including supporting a greater Indian strategic, political, and economic presence in Afghanistan which Americans think, would be welcomed by most Afghans as a stabilizing force in a troubled country.
Require the US to convince Beijing not to fill the vacuum left by the withdrawal of American patronage towards Pakistan; China would need to pursue approaches that complement American’s rather than continuing to provide unqualified support to its “revisionist, increasingly radicalized ally”.
This approach would also require American leaders to take a hard look at their own history in the region. The United States walked away from Afghanistan following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 and spent the 1990s sanctioning Pakistan, helping to spawn the anti-Americanism that pervades the officer corps and broader public today.
The article wonders if the Americans are prepared to walk away and sanction Pakistan again, and if they do, are they prepared to deal with the consequences? Or have the current terms of the relationship so manifestly failed that they have no choice?
National Security: Pakistan-bashing: A prelude to deliver Afghanistan to India
karan.1970
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Or Israel, UK and host of other NATO countries for that matter...
President Camacho
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You mean Canada/UK/Israel/Germany etc all are insecure and unhappy compared to Russians/Cubans/Iranians/North Koreans etc?
Imran Khan
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every one has to die whats the problem ? you killed millions and then remember two only? bloody USA kill uncountable human we know it .so you threat us of death lolz
Drawn_Sword_of_God
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there was an islamic revolution going on in Iran and there was an commie invasion in afghanistan. We know for a fact that the US are against both of these. Need i say more?
rockstarIN
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In one of old US diplomat's words ' there is a cost to say NO to a super power'. The cost is very high if you become an enemy of the same. Look at N. Korea, (I do not take Iran coz of oil) how their people live?
Its a question of survival, choice to be made you want your strategic asset is more important or your citizen's life and betterment?
Drawn_Sword_of_God
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well, then pakistan will be first nation saying **** off to US and still be standing, proudly!
rockstarIN
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at what cost? and on what benefits,,just for chest....ing?
Haseebullah
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How about you read this,written by an American Major.
http://www.kansascity.com/2010/12/26/2543471/is-pakistan-an-ally-in-the-war.html
BY ROBERT BAER
What does Pakistan really want in Afghanistan? That question has become all the more urgent since Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, accused Pakistan of being indirectly responsible for last week's attack on our embassy in Kabul. Reports of a second possible attack, on Sunday, on the building alleged to house the local CIA station will, no doubt, fuel further speculation. Assessing Pakistan's interests in Afghanistan through the prism of honesty and realpolitik rather than wishful thinking may be the only way we're going to get out of this messy war.
For a start, we need to understand that Pakistan intends to bring down the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, even if that means taking on its sometime U.S. ally. Pakistan hates Karzai out of a conviction that he has made common cause with Pakistan's strategic nemesis, India, and a suspicion that the Afghan leader intends to harm Pakistan's strategic interests in other ways. And, of course, the hatred is mutual. Rightly or wrongly, Karzai believes that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) assassinated his father, and would do the same to him given half a chance.
A second misunderstanding we need to dispense with is that the ISI is somehow a rogue organization outside of Pakistan's chain of command and is pursuing a pro-Taliban agenda all its own. The Pakistani army can remove the ISI director, General Ahmad Shuja Pasha or any other officer of the organization at a moment's notice. So, if the ISI did indeed sponsor an attack on the U.S. embassy in Kabul, such a step should be assumed to have been taken with the consent of the power that be in Pakistan, i.e. the military establishment. The idea that to make our Pakistan problem go away, the ISI needs to be "cleaned up" is naive. The Pakistani actions that make life difficult for the U.S. in Afghanistan are driven by a clear-sighted strategic agenda.
As for the Pakistani proxy accused of carrying out the embassy attack, the Haqqani network, we need to understand why Pakistan won't give it up or act against it as the U.S. demands. With up to 15,000 fighters and effective control of large parts of eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan's North Waziristan, the Haqqanis are an indispensible party to a peace settlement in Afghanistan and a vehicle for securing Pakistan's interests in that country after the U.S. withdraws. To sever relations with the Haqqanis now would mean Pakistan giving up a large degree of influence in Afghanistan after the war is over.
The U.S. has for years demanded that Pakistan mount a sweeping military offensive in North Waziristan to destroy the Haqqanis, but even if they were so inclined, the fact is that the Pakistani military has only ever been able to control the main roads in North Waziristan. The Pakistani army is incapable of occupying and holding this territory, no matter how much money we offer or how dire the threats we make.
At the core of the problem stands a simple proposition: Pakistan doesn't trust us with Afghanistan and from Islamabad's perspective, not without cause.We took a strategic decision to invade a country central to their national-security doctrine without seriously consulting them, preferring to think in terms of an Afghanistan of our dreams. Nor did we take into account their strategic interests and the proxies through which they have pursued them. The Soviet Union made the same mistake when it invaded Afghanistan in 1979.
Having failed to prevail a decade later, we now have two choices, neither of them particularly attractive to Washington. We can attempt to destroy the Haqqani base in North Waziristan by invading Pakistan. But to do that effectively would require more troops than we currently have in Afghanistan. Doing so would obviously destroy whatever relations we still have with Pakistan, with profoundly dangerous consequences in Afghanistan and far beyond.
Alternatively, we could hash out a settlement with Pakistan, which would inevitably mean accepting the Haqqanis and easing out Karzai in any political settlement to the conflict. Such a deal would also potentially bring in Afghanistan's other neighbor with real strategic interests in the country Iran. Iran can be unpredictable, but it's by no means certain it would accept true Pakistani-American collusion in Afghanistan. In the mid-'90s, Iran was all but at war with the Taliban, and if Iran isn't consulted on a settlement, it could play the spoiler.
Accepting Pakistan's postconflict agenda and backing off on the Haqqanis at Karzai's expense is too bitter a pill for Washington to swallow in an election year, so we'll muddle through for another year. But when the U.S. finally leaves, don't be surprised to see the Haqqanis in Kabul.
Baer, a former Middle East CIA field officer, is TIME.com's intelligence columnist and the author of See No Evil and The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower.
Read more: The U.S.-Pakistan Row Reveals Hard Choices in Afghanistan - TIME
What does Pakistan really want in Afghanistan? That question has become all the more urgent since Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, accused Pakistan of being indirectly responsible for last week's attack on our embassy in Kabul. Reports of a second possible attack, on Sunday, on the building alleged to house the local CIA station will, no doubt, fuel further speculation. Assessing Pakistan's interests in Afghanistan through the prism of honesty and realpolitik rather than wishful thinking may be the only way we're going to get out of this messy war.
For a start, we need to understand that Pakistan intends to bring down the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, even if that means taking on its sometime U.S. ally. Pakistan hates Karzai out of a conviction that he has made common cause with Pakistan's strategic nemesis, India, and a suspicion that the Afghan leader intends to harm Pakistan's strategic interests in other ways. And, of course, the hatred is mutual. Rightly or wrongly, Karzai believes that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) assassinated his father, and would do the same to him given half a chance.
A second misunderstanding we need to dispense with is that the ISI is somehow a rogue organization outside of Pakistan's chain of command and is pursuing a pro-Taliban agenda all its own. The Pakistani army can remove the ISI director, General Ahmad Shuja Pasha or any other officer of the organization at a moment's notice. So, if the ISI did indeed sponsor an attack on the U.S. embassy in Kabul, such a step should be assumed to have been taken with the consent of the power that be in Pakistan, i.e. the military establishment. The idea that to make our Pakistan problem go away, the ISI needs to be "cleaned up" is naive. The Pakistani actions that make life difficult for the U.S. in Afghanistan are driven by a clear-sighted strategic agenda.
As for the Pakistani proxy accused of carrying out the embassy attack, the Haqqani network, we need to understand why Pakistan won't give it up or act against it as the U.S. demands. With up to 15,000 fighters and effective control of large parts of eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan's North Waziristan, the Haqqanis are an indispensible party to a peace settlement in Afghanistan and a vehicle for securing Pakistan's interests in that country after the U.S. withdraws. To sever relations with the Haqqanis now would mean Pakistan giving up a large degree of influence in Afghanistan after the war is over.
The U.S. has for years demanded that Pakistan mount a sweeping military offensive in North Waziristan to destroy the Haqqanis, but even if they were so inclined, the fact is that the Pakistani military has only ever been able to control the main roads in North Waziristan. The Pakistani army is incapable of occupying and holding this territory, no matter how much money we offer or how dire the threats we make.
At the core of the problem stands a simple proposition: Pakistan doesn't trust us with Afghanistan and from Islamabad's perspective, not without cause.We took a strategic decision to invade a country central to their national-security doctrine without seriously consulting them, preferring to think in terms of an Afghanistan of our dreams. Nor did we take into account their strategic interests and the proxies through which they have pursued them. The Soviet Union made the same mistake when it invaded Afghanistan in 1979.
Having failed to prevail a decade later, we now have two choices, neither of them particularly attractive to Washington. We can attempt to destroy the Haqqani base in North Waziristan by invading Pakistan. But to do that effectively would require more troops than we currently have in Afghanistan. Doing so would obviously destroy whatever relations we still have with Pakistan, with profoundly dangerous consequences in Afghanistan and far beyond.
Alternatively, we could hash out a settlement with Pakistan, which would inevitably mean accepting the Haqqanis and easing out Karzai in any political settlement to the conflict. Such a deal would also potentially bring in Afghanistan's other neighbor with real strategic interests in the country Iran. Iran can be unpredictable, but it's by no means certain it would accept true Pakistani-American collusion in Afghanistan. In the mid-'90s, Iran was all but at war with the Taliban, and if Iran isn't consulted on a settlement, it could play the spoiler.
Accepting Pakistan's postconflict agenda and backing off on the Haqqanis at Karzai's expense is too bitter a pill for Washington to swallow in an election year, so we'll muddle through for another year. But when the U.S. finally leaves, don't be surprised to see the Haqqanis in Kabul.
Baer, a former Middle East CIA field officer, is TIME.com's intelligence columnist and the author of See No Evil and The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower.
Read more: The U.S.-Pakistan Row Reveals Hard Choices in Afghanistan - TIME
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