GHQ TASKS IMRAN KHAN WITH TAKEOVER OF AFGHANISTAN

Although Trump made several strong statements on Pakistan, in practice there appears to be growing congruence between the US and Pakistan, as shown by the fact that Pompeo will pay a courtesy call on the new PM of Pakistan in Islamabad before sitting down

Those familiar with the planners active within GHQ Rawalpindi, including within the InterServices Intelligence (ISI), claim that Prime Minister Imran Khan is “doing brilliantly” in fulfilling Phase I of an “integrated strategy for Afghanistan and India”. Planning for this began 26 months ago, and went into high gear about eight months ago, the preliminary stage being the selection as Prime Minister of former Pakistan cricket captain and heartthrob of several well-con- nected women in India and the UK, Imran Khan. From that time onwards, key institutions within Pakistan and overseas “got the message” as to who would be the next formal Head of Government in a country where the military has been holding the reins of authority directly or otherwise since 1953. Khan was told to “concentrate on US policymakers, especially through influential contacts in the UK” so as to convince Washington to accept a greatly expanded role for the Taliban in the dovecotes of power in Kabul. From around mid-2015 onwards, GHQ Rawalpindi had been ensuring a plentiful supply of weapons and cash to Taliban elements in Afghanistan, with the result that forces loyal to President Ashraf Ghani have steadily lost ground to the extremist militia. GHQ’s “Imran card” has been in operation since mid-2015, with the result that the US administration has killed off most of the key Pashtun militia leaders hostile to GHQ Rawalpindi, leaving mostly those amenable to instructions from the Pakistan military. The Barack Obama administration was in a hurry to get its troops out of harm’s way in Afghanistan, and was tempted by the ISI’s offer to facilitate a situation whereby attacks by the terror militia would be concentrated on the Afghan National Army and police, rather than, as was the case previously, on US forces. Meanwhile, aware that President Ghani “listens only to the US administration and to no one else”, the Pakistan military has intensified its off-camera discussions with US counterparts on Afghanistan, mainly on inserting the Taliban into the Afghan government, thereby creating a Trojan horse that would quickly ensure the replacement of the Ghani government with that run by another Pashtun leader, but who this time would be a client of the ISI as was the case in the past, before 9/11 altered the situation.

Being a Pashtun, it is expected that Prime Minister Khan’s carefully cultivated pro-Taliban image will assist in making the militia coalesce around GHQ in the manner that they did during the 1990s under the direction of the Clinton administration, whose affinity for the militia was on public display rather than hidden. Over the past seven months, Imran Khan has established contacts with more than 30 Taliban functionaries, and seems to have done as expert a job of winning their trust as he has with policymakers in the US and the UK. Ex-wife Jemima Khan, who converted to Islam to marry the cricketer, “is still close to him”, and as a consequence, “Imran is welcomed into high society in the UK with an access not available to any other Pakistani”. His UK contacts have worked hard at linking Khan to policymakers and think-tankers in Washington, which is probably why the Trump administration seems to be following a line on Pakistan very different from the no-