Drop Site News reports in “Afghans Search for Missing Family Members After Strike on Rehab Center Kills At Least 400” that “The deadly bombing of Omid Rehabilitation Center follows weeks of escalation between Pakistan and Afghanistan.”
JUNAID S. AHMAD, [email protected], @Academicatarms
Ahmad is director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Decolonization in Islamabad, Pakistan. His recent articles include: “War on Iran: Zionist strategy and the machinery of Muslim collusion” and “The Gazafication of the Af-Pak Frontier.”
He just wrote the piece “The other war in the Af-Pak frontier,” which states: “None of this means Pakistan lacks genuine security concerns. It plainly does. Militant violence emanating from Afghan territory has exacted a terrible price inside Pakistan, hitting mosques, hospitals, courts, security personnel, and ordinary civilians. But that is precisely why the current performance is so intellectually bankrupt. A state that spent decades cultivating militant infrastructures does not get to pose as an innocent bystander when the machinery of militancy mutates, multiplies, and turns inward. Blowback is not a cosmic mystery. It is policy returning home without an appointment.
“For both Afghans and Pakistanis, skepticism toward Islamabad is not an accident but an accumulated reflex. It is difficult to take strategic clarity seriously from a state whose own political order is widely perceived as illegitimate. The most popular political leader [Imran Khan] among Pashtuns on both sides of the Durand Line sits in a Pakistani prison.
“The deeper problem is not simply hypocrisy. It is strategic infantilism masquerading as realism. The Taliban were never disqualifying when they were useful. Their real offense was never extremism, brutality, or medieval governance. The offense was sovereignty. Islamabad could tolerate almost anything except disobedience. A proxy is charming only so long as it remains a proxy. The moment it develops a will of its own, the sponsor rediscovers international law, counterterror doctrine, and righteous indignation in one miraculous burst of enlightenment. …
“The billions of dollars’ worth of weapons left behind after the American withdrawal did not dissolve into poetry. They entered a region already saturated with proxies, covert channels, ideological militias, and states that have perfected the art of denying authorship while enjoying the consequences.
“Empire’s genius, if one must flatter it, lies not in choosing one side cleanly but in keeping enough actors armed, frightened, and mutually enraged that no durable sovereignty can breathe.”