Mystery surrounds the so-called drone attack that allegedly killed Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansoor. Apparently it was the Afghan Taliban Chief who was targeted but in effect the target was the process of the Peace talks. Whether or not the person killed alongwith the driver was actual Mullah Mansoor or simply some Wali Mohammad a resident of Karachi with Qila Abdullah as his permanent address, has yet to be confirmed, but what stands as clear as sunlight is that the peace process that had previously been derailed when the announcement of Mullah Umar’s death had come from the Afghan government quarters, has again been torpedoed.
This time it is abundantly clear that it is the U.S government that doesn’t want the peace process to either continue or succeed. The irony is that after the drone attack John Kerry the Secretary of State not only informed our Prime Minister that the Afghan Taliban Chief had been targeted but also stated that the main obstacle in the way of the peace talks had been removed. Whether or not the man killed was Mullah Mansoor will be known for certain in the days to come, but Pakistan has been landed in an embarrassing and precarious position. There is a great likelihood of Pakistan suffering from yet another backlash from the enraged Taliban militants. Also of a vilification campaign on the part of her enemies to accuse her of harbouring “terrorists”, and to paint her as a ‘safe haven’ for them.
It is unfortunate for us that we at this critical juncture of our history don’t have any foreign policy. This can be judged from the fact that our Prime Minister, instead of reacting and responding to this critical development went ahead with his plans to cook up a strategy in London in company of Mr Zardari and Mr Fazl ur Rahman, to counter the perceived threat of the Military pressure on the government to address the Panama Leaks issue with a positive state of mind rather than to try to diffuse it in a calculated exchange of accusations and counter-accusation.
Pakistan needs a government today.
