A war that Pakistan invented for itself

As Pakistan's air attacks against Afghanistan intensify, criticism is also rising.

- Tara Kartha

Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo recently pointed out that decades of support for the Taliban had finally come home to roost. Social media is awash with images of Kabul burning, and live fire across the border, even as the Afghans claimed their own air strikes. All this hardly comes out of the blue. The Pakistan defence minister Khwaja Asif had warned of air strikes against Afghanistan, as the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) waged a relentless war against Pakistani forces. What ‘was worrying was the minister's warning in the same breath of a “strong possibility” of an India-Pakistan war, apparently due to India’s support for the Taliban in a proxy war. The minister rambled on, and didn’t give a single fact to support his contention, but in the world of diplomacy, these are fighting words. It needs to be examined carefully.