No end in sight?
That ISIS has managed to inflict the deadliest attack on Kabul yet in this long war, even though the Taliban have been trying to up the ante themselves under their new leadership, means the new front of this war is now established. ISIS has been a growing problem inside Afghanistan for a while now. But its activities, so far, have been limited to battling the Taliban, sometimes ferociously, in and around the Nangarhar area. No doubt the prospect of some thousand Hazara Shi’a marching for their rights provided the ideal opportunity to strike at the sectarian minority as well as the Kabul government.
Kabul itself speaks of intelligence reports warning about this attack. That it still went ahead shows how the security arrangement, even for Kabul, has loopholes. And even though ISIS is in no way related to Pakistan, Kabul has once again put up difficult questions for Islamabad. Ghani says he himself green-lighted the attack which, with US help, took out the APS planner recently. Also, the Afghan government has so far conducted 11 operations in the hunt for Mullah Fazlullah, just as we have demanded.
Pakistan’s position on some of their concerns, however, remains ambiguous at best. At the forefront is the Haqqani Network, of course, which they say is central to the Taliban outreach and we, despite Zarb-e-Azb, do not talk about clearly. Then there is the matter of the Taliban, which even Sartaj Aziz has admitted, in a way, are remote controlled from Pakistan. Yet despite our assurances (to the international community) and threats (to the Taliban) in case of the latter’s non-compliance with the peace process, nothing seems to have changed in Islamabad; even after the collapse of the Quadrilateral.
Surely, with the IS footprint now deepening in the region, it is in the interest of every country, in the region and beyond, to wrap up the Taliban war once and for all. And it seems everybody is waiting for Pakistan to fine tune its strategy so things can move ahead.