Geopolitical Bermuda Triangle

Any US-Pak-Afghan headway vanishes without a trace

Sometimes it infuriatingly seems that the triumvirate pivotal to negotiated resolution of the Afghan imbroglio, despite all contrary pretensions, is actually itself responsible for non-realisation of this highly desirable goal. One day the conditions for peace-at-last might seem bright, with the troika virtually on the same page, making the right verbal noises and concessions, but the next day it is back in fire-breathing mode, its actions and words cancelling out the previous day’s hopeful ones, and  things are back to square one. Perhaps the threesome do not mean what they say, or say what they mean, but this exasperating inconsistency and ambiguity is needlessly dragging on the ‘forever war’, adding to the Afghan people’s pain and woes. An illusionary ‘tournament of shadows’, and not something substantive, is going on, and a rare, optimistic development or newfound goodwill quickly sinks amid a renewed war of words and mutual suspicions.

Pakistan’s uneasy relationship with Afghanistan was mending in recent weeks, with intensified high-level exchanges, not least the Afghan National Security Adviser’s hosting of his Pakistani counterpart on March 17, apparently burying the hatchet and past ill-will, but the selfsame Dr Jekyll turned into an accusatory Mr Hyde in Washington on March 24, making  inexplicable  and  ill-timed anti-Pakistan allegations regarding the Taliban and Daesh, and possibly jeopardising ‘comprehensive dialogue’, undermining President Ghani’s Kabul Peace Process, apart from vitiating atmosphere of Uzbekistan’s international conference on Afghanistan on March 26-27, attended by Pakistan’s foreign minister. Washington-Islamabad ties, despite intensified top level military contacts, meeting between Pakistani PM and vice president Mike Pence, to and fro visits by senior officials, too remain essentially hostage to the tiresome ‘do more’ refrain. Typical contradictory signals include Lisa Curtis, Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for South and Central Asia at the National Security Council, extolling growing Pak-US collaboration against terrorism at an Independence Day function of Pakistan’s Washington embassy, while simultaneously, the Trump administration was blacklisting seven Pakistani companies on the charge of  engaging in nuclear proliferation activities, thereby striking a blow at the country’s Nuclear Supplier’s Group membership ambitions. And, unfortunately, when Washington sneezes, Kabul too catches a cold.