Russia Implied That Pakistan Is Colluding With the US to Blackmail the Taliban
The outcome of this Machiavellian policy is that regional security is jeopardized as a result, which in turn endangers Pakistan’s own objective interests even if its US-captured elite don’t yet realize this. Hopefully patriotic elements within The Establishment will succeed in reversing these counterproductive policies before it’s too late.
Russian Special Presidential Envoy for Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov raised eyebrows earlier this week in an article that he published at Nezavisimaya Gazeta about the war-torn country that he specializes in. According to him, “The Americans are openly blackmailing Taliban leaders, threatening them with a drone attack and forcing them to distance themselves from Russia and China (in this case, they demand that Kabul should refrain from restricting the activities of Afghanistan-based Uyghur militants from the so-called East Turkestan Islamic Movement, designated as a terrorist organization in Russia).”
He didn’t directly say it, but this influential Russian policymaker very strongly implied that Pakistan is colluding with the US with respect to the latter’s blackmail scheme against the Taliban. After all, the drone strikes that Kabulov said that America is holding over that group’s heads as a Damocles’ sword to coerce them into doing its foreign policy bidding are only credible if Pakistan’s post-modern coup regime – which just unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate former Prime Minister Imran Khan – continues at the very least “passively facilitating” those attacks like it’s suspected of doing in early August.
From their perspective, the dangerous security dilemma that their country is presently embroiled in with the Taliban might mean that “the ends justify the means” in order to defend Pakistan’s interests as they understand them to be. That’s a fair point in principle, but everything is actually a lot different in practice considering the context that Kabulov just described. First and foremost, whether Pakistan’s post-modern coup regime realizes it or not, this Damocles’ sword that they’re jointly holding over the Taliban’s heads together with their US patron threatens China’s objective national security interests.
This conclusion is due to the fact that the People’s Republic is adamantly opposed to the ETIM, which it rightly considers to be a terrorist group. Pakistan has also designated that organization accordingly, yet colluding with the US to blackmail the Taliban – even if this is only driven by their dangerous security dilemma and not with any anti-Chinese intentions in mind – inadvertently helps that selfsame terrorist group by contributing to the pressure that Washington’s putting on Afghanistan’s de facto leaders to “refrain from restricting” the ETIM’s terrorist activities there.
The second point proving that all isn’t as simple as it might seem is that Russia has recently emerged as the Taliban’s preferred geo-economic partner. This decision was tacitly made by that group in order to preemptively avert any potentially disproportionate dependence on their Pakistani partners with whom they’re now intensely feuding due to their dangerous security dilemma. Moscow has no intent to impede Islamabad’s own geo-economic engagement in this strategically positioned state since their respective visions are complementary, yet the post-modern coup regime might still be jealous of it.
The artificially manufactured rivalry that the US is conspiring to revive between Russia and Pakistan over Afghanistan leads to the final point about how America envisages its newly restored South Asian vassal catalyzing the region’s grand strategic reorientation in a way that impedes multipolarity. To that end, it’s either blackmailed and/or bribed its proxies in that post-modern coup regime into at the very least “passively facilitating” their drone strikes in Afghanistan, the last one of which Russia worried worsened regional security. If this arrangement remains in place, then Pakistan will be responsible for all that happens.
The resultant destabilization of the broader Central-South-West Asian space surrounding Afghanistan would worsen Pakistan’s own objective national interests as well, hence why it’s counterproductive to its security to continue “passively facilitating” the US’ drone strikes there that Washington is leveraging to blackmail the Taliban. This extremely reckless policy isn’t even popular with the Pakistani masses, yet it’s being promulgated anyhow because America has successfully captured its elite, including those within its Establishment who are supposed to be responsible for defending their country’s interests.
The tragedy that’s unfolding is that the US is regrettably making progress on transforming Pakistan from the “Zipper of Eurasia” into the “Faultline of Eurasia”, with the latest evidence of this being Kabulov’s innuendo that this country is colluding with America to blackmail the Taliban. The outcome of this Machiavellian policy is that regional security is jeopardized as a result, which in turn endangers Pakistan’s own objective interests even if its US-captured elite don’t yet realize this. Hopefully patriotic elements within The Establishment will succeed in reversing these counterproductive policies before it’s too late.
