Hakimullah Mehsud, head of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) was more than once within the range of the US drones, but was eliminated by a strike just a day before Pakistani negotiators could begin talks with the TTP on terms of peaceful co-existence. This was despite a US promise to support Pakistan in reaching a workable détente with terrorists.
It is worth recalling that just two weeks ago, the US had reported capturing a TTP leader who, along with the Afghan government (and Indian backing?), was planning a joint strategy to challenge Pakistan's defence forces. How reliable were that TTP leader's disclosures, were they shared with Pakistan and what was the Pakistan's response thereto, remain secret. The exit of Hakimullah implies a leadership change in the TTP.
Reports are that while the TTP wing operating from inside Pakistan favours one individual, the wing operating from Afghanistan (and under Afghan influence) favours another individual to replace Hakimullah - a choice that will ultimately decide TTP's future outlook towards Pakistan.
The instant response of Pakistani government was resentment over the event calling it an attempt to derail peace negotiations, urgent convening of the Cabinet Committee on National Security (CCNS) to review ties with the US, and instructions to ambassadors in the P-5 states to brief host governments on the setback to Pakistan's peace initiative by the drone strike killing the TTP chief.
The mystery is whether Hakimullah was removed from the scene because he had developed a soft corner for Pakistan, or because it was conclusively established (by the US) that he was deceiving Pakistan into believing that TTP was serious about peace. The sooner Pakistan's government discovers the truth the better it would for planning its future strategy.
During his visit to Washington, Nawaz Sharif had sought suspension of US drone strikes to build a credible scenario for negotiating peace with terrorists, but despites a US promise to support Pakistan's efforts in this critical exercise, drone strikes were resumed. Worse still, while the US killed Hakimullah, it calls that event an internal matter of Pakistan. How the US undermines its credibility is portrayed by that fact that, soon after targeting Hakimullah, a State Department official said that "The US and Pakistan continue to have a vital, shared strategic interest in ending extremist violence to build a more prosperous, stable and peaceful region" although Afghanistan now resembles Congo - a victim of a half a century long civil war.
Pakistan's diplomacy has been a long failure. The almost ever-lasting Kashmir dispute and those that arose later on placed Pakistan's eastern borders under a permanent threat. On the Western borders, by joining the US in its war against the Soviet Union, Pakistan created enemies on its western borders too because of lack of vision in its governments and foreign office.
Foresight and rationality demanded that after the US walked out of Afghanistan in 1989 leaving it in total mess economically as well as administratively, Pakistan should have helped (as best as it could) the Afghans in rebuilding their shattered country because that was the only way to convince the Afghans that Pakistan wasn't just a proxy for the US. Sadly, the political parties in power in the 1990s decade (and again since 2008) did nothing of the sort; instead, they backed the so-called revolutionary outfits that had no idea of statecraft, far less about rebuilding a war-torn economy. The fact is that most of them were just heavily armed (courtesy a huge cache of arms left behind by the Soviet army) gangsters.
Over time, as economic miseries escalated, common Afghans concluded that Pakistan was a party to the destruction of Afghanistan, and had zero concerns for rebuilding it, and after what the US did in the post-9/11 era (wherein Pakistan supported the US), they also concluded that Pakistan was as much their enemy as was the US, and befriending Pakistan's enemies was right.
The Afghans didn't realise that punishing Pakistan this way meant handing Afghanistan over to criminal outfits and turning it into a base for terrorists from several countries with designs on Pakistan because it had committed the 'sin' of becoming a nuclear power despite being a Muslim country - a blunder whose cost the Afghans are paying for the past two decades.
Successive regimes in Pakistan (civilian as well as Army) failed to realise that Pakistan had a serious image problem in Afghanistan - a country with which Pakistan shares probably the world's most dangerous border in terms of terrain, which the Afghans could use to their advantage in sneaking into Pakistan's western provinces and cause havoc that Pakistan now confronts. While Pakistani governments refuse to accept their blunder in Afghanistan, the US has finally done so. James Dobbins, US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, admits that the US made a grave mistake by not initiating in 2002 an effort to integrate the Taliban who were "willing to come over, to operate under the new dispensation, and willing to accept the constitution as it was evolving at the time." According to him, "The decision to move onto Iraq ultimately made it more difficult to turn attention back to Afghanistan once the situation there deteriorated..., by 2005, 2006 it was clear that much more needed to be done in Afghanistan and we simply didn't have the resources to do so." What he didn't clarify was the use the resources would have been put to - more attrition or rebuilding of Afghanistan. Despite these admissions, ironically, James Dobbins insists that Afghanistan had made progress in recent years. The extent of this "progress" will become clear once the US exits Afghanistan. As of now, the only globally accepted expertise that Afghanistan possesses is terrorism that is feared by even "super-powers" such as Russia and the US, and its allies. These "superpowers" can't blame anyone except themselves for the threats they face from Afghanistan. Pakistan too must share this blame because, instead of convincing the Soviet leadership that access to warm waters of the Arabian Sea required a rail-road corridor through Afghanistan and Pakistan, not a suicidal conquest of Afghanistan, Pakistan joined hands with the US. Pakistan's attempt (derailed by the US) to find a mode of peaceful co-existence with the Afghans - a belated realisation of its past blunders - deserved global support to begin a process of making the Afghans realise that terrorism can't be a source of living. That they must find civilised ways of existence because, in the long run, they will be the losers; eventually, their misguided leaders will fall, one by one. It is time the Afghans learnt lessons from the way the West destroyed Congo.