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A comment carried by The Post has made strange disclosures. The news item appearing in a section of the British press on Monday that Britain had planned to build a Taliban training camp for 2,000 fighters in southern Afghanistan as part of a top-secret deal to make them swap sides contains devils in the detail despite the putative façade of winning the hearts of the Afghan fighting legions by isolating them from the hunk of Taliban marauders. According to the details, the Afghan government under President Hamid Karzai got hold of intriguing information in December last that the British forces in southern Afghanistan were pumping in money to provide military training to 1,800 ordinary Taliban fighters and 200 low-level commanders under a project, called Community Defence Volunteers, so that so that they could be persuaded to act as independent fighting force, turning its guns against Taliban. The revelations have also unraveled the mystery of Karzai regime expelling two top diplomats for taking "important tactical" decisions without prior approval from the Kabul administration in the face of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's pledge that Britain will not negotiate with the insurgents independently of the Kabul regime. The matter commands serious concern as it carries the potential to derail the already fragmented campaign against the Taliban as the NATO forces have failed to inflict definitive blows on the elements out to undermine the governing paradigm in Afghanistan that emerged in the post 2001 years.In the historical perspective, we have several analogous precedents that merit close scrutiny vis-à-vis the advisability as well as viability of the purported approach of erecting counter militancy forces with questionable credentials in terms of dependability and responsibility. In the 1980s, the capitalist bloc depended upon an assorted array of fighting forces to drive the Soviet forces out of Afghanistan. Money, weapons and training were furnished through a system as porous as the physical frontiers of Afghanistan. From February 1989 onward, the erstwhile mujahideen turned their guns against each other in a war of mutual attritional once the purportedly common foe from across the river Amu had left. With the world having lost interest in the wreckage of Afghanistan, all efforts from Pakistani mentors to bring a semblance of peace and order failed till the emergence of Taliban in 1995. Several analysts welcomed the emergence of the Taliban without sensing that the black turbans were as impervious to reason as their predecessors when it come to addressing the sensitivities of the modern world. It was amply demonstrated in the wake of 9/11 when the Taliban refused to facilitate the pursuit of those allegedly behind the 9/11 terror attacks on the pretext of the specious Afghan code. Again, Pakistan's government resorted to a dual policy of going hard on al Qaeda while using velvets gloves for the Taliban in the hope to keep the option of strategic depth alive. The policy failed to yield dividends as the fall-out of the Afghan imbroglio entrenched itself on this side of the Durand Line. Pakistan has been realising the inadvisability of assuming that the Taliban could be classified as 'good' and 'bad' through piecemeal peace deals since 2004. The religious militancy has a dynamics of its own, clearly defying the dictates of the international order. That insular approach, spurred by the dogmatic rigidity, makes it highly volatile and unreliable. All efforts to appease it through underhand means are bound to fail. Only concerted efforts with complete transparency among the allies forces can hope to achieve the goals of a region free of the extremist menace.
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