Washington: Recent arrests of high-profile Afghan Taliban leadership by Pakistan do not indicate a strategic change in Pakistan`s counter-terrorism strategy but merely a tactic, says a leading South Asia expert.
In reality, Pakistan wants to assume a leading role in negotiating and reconciling with the Afghan Taliban to ensure a friendlier neighbour after the United States withdraws, concludes a new paper by Ashley J Tellis.
"Pakistan is threatened by the 2011 drawdown of US troops from Afghanistan, which it believes will leave behind an Afghan state with strong ties to its rival India," says Tellis, senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think tank.
"A true change in Pakistan`s strategic calculations requires Islamabad to accept that the Taliban - and not India - is the greatest threat to success in Afghanistan," he says.
Thus, despite arrests of Mullah Beradar and other Taliban leaders, which were either inadvertent or self-serving, Pakistan`s overall strategy of protecting the Afghan Taliban leadership has not changed, he says.
The lack of US leadership at the January London conference on Afghanistan allowed reconciliation with the Taliban to become a centrepiece of the endgame of international involvement, Tellis notes. Pakistan`s recent arrests of a few Taliban leaders are meant to exert control over the reconciliation process that Pakistan believes is imminent, he suggests.
"The recent seizures of a few Taliban leaders by Pakistan isn`t much of a turning point in Islamabad`s traditional strategy after all," concludes Tellis.
IANS
