Time has again and again proved that nurturing militants, however noble the cause, costs governments dearly
JUBAIL, SAUDI ARABIA: The world must realise that we may not like the face of Mullah Omar, but that is how life is, that is what Afghanistan is — former president of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf said recently in an interview. He was quite frank in talking about Pakistan’s role in nurturing the Taliban and allied militant groups operating in Afghanistan, as a legitimate counterweight against India’s presence there. Musharraf also stressed the need for the new government in Kabul to share power with the Taliban if it wishes to see peace in the country.
I saw not much condemnation of these ‘revelations’ directly coming from the man who directed the Afghan war theatre from Islamabad for most of the last decade. Why don’t we use the same formula in Pakistan where a number of militant outfits are operating? Time has again and again proved that nurturing militants, however noble the cause, costs governments dearly. We like to repeat the same experiment in the expectation that this time around we will get a different result — but that never happens.
Masood Khan
Published in The Express Tribune, March 3rd, 2015.
Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.
