Several days ago, the Editorial LiveJournalists reported on their interview with Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Mahmud Ali Durrani:
While Pakistan frequently strays from elected government, gives women few rights and protections, and engages in a nuclear arms race with India, the ambassador said there is one sin of which Pakistan is not guilty: supporting Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan. Durrani admitted that Pakistan had supported the mujahedeen freedom fighters (as had the CIA) during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Pakistan also backed the fighters when they became the Taliban as a means of stabilizing an Afghanistan torn apart by war lords.
That was apparently good enough for the Editorial LiveJournalists, who didn’t press the issue.
Also several days ago, the New York Times reported on this somewhat different assessment from Afghanistan’s elected president:
In strikingly strong language, President Hamid Karzai warned Tuesday that a failure to bring peace to Afghanistan would destroy the whole region, and laid the blame squarely on neighboring Pakistan.
[snip]
Mr. Karzai charged that elements of the Pakistani government were still supporting Islamic militants, as they had in the past, and that if such sources of terrorism were not defeated, Afghans and international soldiers would continue to die.
“The state of Pakistan was supporting the Taliban, so we presume if there is still any Taliban, that they are still being supported by a state element,” he said.
“In Afghanistan we are fighting the symptoms of terrorism, not the roots of it,” he added. “We feel we should go to the sources of terrorism and fight it there, or we’ll keep losing men, Afghan and international, in a vicious circle.”
The charge that Pakistan is supporting extremists to destabilize Afghanistan is an old and contentious one between the nations. The Pakistani intelligence agency has long used Islamic militant groups as a tool to press rival governments in Afghanistan and India.
Today Pakistan says it has ceased that support, though evidence is mounting that hundreds of suicide bombers and other militants — from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia — are being recruited and trained in Pakistan’s tribal areas along the Afghan border.
Recall that some time ago, Editorial LiveJournalist and apparent hothead Veronica Bucio rudely called the U.S. Attorney General a liar to his face over a matter of his family’s background during one of the LiveJournalist sessions. She (apparently) didn’t pull out that rude stunt for the ambassador’s assertions about his country’s involvement in Afghanistan (whether passive or active), although it might have been nice to see the Editorial LiveJournalists at least challenge his spin instead of printing it uncritically.
