Pakistan’s back in the Great Game
and unable to deliver on good governance. The agreement that set up the National Unity Government with Abdullah in 2014 required that within two years the constitution would be amended to provide for a prime minister, has not happened. The largely non-Pashtun Jamiat from whose ranks Abdullah, foreign minister Rabbani and many more joined the government, has started speaking up as an opposition party. They led a big anti-government demonstration two days after the May 31 terrorist attacks leading to police firing with six dead including the son of the deputy speaker of the upper house of parliament. The next day, at his funeral, attended by Abdullah, Rabbani and others, three bombs went off killing nine persons. Jamiat leaders like Governor Atta of Balkh blamed persons within the government for the complicity in the May 31 bomb blast. And for the same reason, Rabbani boycotted his own government’s Kabul Peace Process presided over by President Ghani.
Trump’s effectively ceding leadership to China on many fronts has meant that Pakistan is emboldened enough to try and push the Afghan government hard enough for them to acknowledge that Pakistan would have de facto control over Afghan affairs, something it tried to do after 1989 Russian withdrawal. At present, the momentum seems to be favouring them as neither is the Afghan government united nor are the security forces in a condition to take the initiative back from the Taliban. If these trends are not reversed, Afghanistan could see increased violence that could potentially spill over its borders.