By Kunwar Khuldune Shahid
Pakistan’s government has vowed to end the Good Taliban/Bad Taliban distinction. Should we believe it?
“There shall be no distinction between good and bad Taliban,” Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif exclaimed while chairing the All Parties Conference after the Peshawar school massacre on December 16. Sharif’s words were the ostensible curtain call on Pakistan’s decades-long policy of using Islamist militants to wage proxy jihad in Kashmir and Afghanistan.
Even so, there remained the small matter of affirmation from the military establishment that had founded and expounded the “strategic assets” as an integral part of the foreign policy of a state that has surrendered most of its pull-able strings to the Army.
“I see no reason why the Pakistan army would reverse its Good/Bad Taliban policy,” said Myra MacDonald author of Heights of Madness: The Siachen War, echoing the popular sentiment among the intelligentsia associated with South Asian security.
“The Peshawar attack, however heinous, does not actually change the overall security environment in the region,” she added.
Ayesha Siddiqa, a military analyst and author of Military Inc: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy, agreed: “While the ‘Good/Bad Taliban’ policy shall remain, the definition might be revised.”
Read the full story at The Diplomat