(Disclaimer: this is a work of fiction. Learn to take a joke; you’ll live longer.)
A clerical error at the Pakistani Foreign Office in the wee hours of Friday has caused the Pakistan government to officially recognise the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan run by the Taliban.
“Crap, that happened now,” said an unnamed source in the Foreign Office. “We were supposed to do it six months after the Americans leave. Those dumbos on the Afghanistan Desk really need to get their act together.”
“There is going to be a fallout, obviously,” said the source. “It will make people think that the Pakistani state was supporting the Afghan insurgency all along. Without this error, nobody, absolutely nobody would have thought this. Nobody.”
Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi apologised to the international community in a press conference a couple of hours after the error.
“Though we regret the error, now that it has happened, why reverse it, only to go through the whole paper rigmarole again when…well, when we would have to recognise the government of our…I mean the true representation of the Afghan people..”
The Pakistan government has already commenced financial aid to the new Afghan government in the form of an endowment to its consulate in Quetta, informally known as the Quetta Shura.