September 11th is the deadline for the American army to leave Afghanistan and end it’s decades long war. A lot of people are asking questions of why this war went on for so long and why America has lost this war. And a lot of people end up blaming Pakistan for America’s failures.
“Directorate S” is a book written by Steve Coll, that explains Pakistan’s position categorically from the start of the war till the end. From Ex President Musharraf till current Prime Minister Imran Khan, every Pakistani military and civilian leader have been telling the US only one thing, negotiate with the Taliban as they are local Afghani’s and cannot be expelled from their own country.
The book also categorically tells us how the USA always went against Pakistan’s advice, whether it was to help the Northern Alliance take over Kabul, or whether to give Pakistan time to deploy troops to the borders before the USA bombed Tora Bora mountains or even when Pakistan asked them to negotiate a peace with Taliban.
The book also highlights how the USA used India’s funded Ahmed Shah Masood’s Northern Alliance group whose second command was Amrullah Saleh, the current VP of Afghanistan who likes to spew hatred against Pakistan at every opportunity he gets. Incidently Ahmad Shah Masood was killed in a suicide attack, two days before September 11th World Trade Center incident, and he was pronounced dead in an Indian funded hospital in Tajikistan. Reading the book the readers would understand how Pakistan had always tried to help the USA and even how the Taliban continuously asked to negotiate Peace with the USA, but in both cases their requests were turned down. Therefore at this juncture the people of America, Afghanistan and Pakistan should be asking themselves is why the USA Government and CIA allowed the US Army and coalition forces to continue a war, when in the end the USA Government had to negotiate a peace settlement anyways?
Shahryar Khan Baseer P Engr
Peshawar
