How Pakistan Has Ruined Its Political/Military Relationship With The U.S.

Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testifies at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and Iraq, Sept. 22, 2011. DOD photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Chad J. McNeeley

Mullen Takes On The ISI -- Aqil Shah, Foreign Affairs

Will Sharp Words Be Backed by Deeds?

The killing of Burhanuddin Rabbani, the former Afghan president who led the High Peace Council, illustrates all too well the tremendous obstacles to a meaningful reconciliation among Afghanistan's various factions. Before his death on September 20 at the hands of a man who claimed to be an emissary of the Quetta Shura, Rabbani, an ethnic Tajik, had been in charge of reconciliation efforts with Taliban insurgents. His appointment had apparently been meant as a way to pull the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance into the peace process. The jury is still out on exactly who ordered the killing -- the Taliban first claimed and then denied involvement -- but its implications are clear. Rabbani's assassination, the latest in a systematic campaign of targeted killings of high-profile anti-Taliban Afghan leaders, has increased the chance that tensions among the Northern Alliance, the Taliban, and other Islamist Pashtun groups could devolve into all-out war.

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My Comment: A good summary from Aqil Shah on the deteriorating relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan. This is a must read.