In 1979, Pak-Afghan relations strengthened Pak-US relations by waging a conflict against the invading Soviet forces in Afghanistan. However, in 2017, Pak-Afghan relations are wearying Pak-US relations, when the US itself is embroiled in the Afghanistan quagmire. Lately, what nudged Pakistan back into the Afghanistan snare was the attack of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) on the Army Public School (APS) in Peshawar in December 2014. The TTP had taken refuge in Afghanistan and was attacking soft targets in Pakistan. Pakistan took two main steps. First, the country asked Kabul earnestly to take action against the TTP. This is where the bargaining position of the Kabul government improved. Second, the then COAS General Raheel Sharif visited Kabul in February 2015 carrying along the Afghan Taliban’s message for the President Ashraf Ghani that they were ready for reconciliation (or at least talks for reconciliation) with his government. This is where, though under duress, Pakistan exposed itself. It was established that Pakistan had links with the Afghan Taliban; Pakistan could persuade the Afghan Taliban to reconciliation (or even negotiations) with the Kabul government; and Pakistan’s COAS could become an emissary for messaging between the Afghan Taliban and the Kabul government. Nevertheless, this is how the famous Murree Peace Process started in 2015. By masquerading themselves as genuine, the representatives of the Afghan Taliban committed a grave act of injustice to all participants, observers and the host of the Murree talks On July 7, 2015, the first round of the Murree talks, described as the 2+2+1 was successfully held. Among the attendees were the representatives of the warring parties (the High Peace Council of the Afghan government led by the Deputy Foreign Minister Hekmat Khalil Karzai, and the representatives of the Taliban led by Mullah Abbas Durrani), the representatives of observers (the US and China) and the representatives of the host and broker (Pakistan). The objective was to facilitate an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace and reconciliation process. The mode adopted was to forge confidence-building measures (CBM) to evoke mutual trust, reduction of violence, and ending the Afghan conflict. The Afghan Taliban came with certain conditions (such as the complete departure of foreign troops from the Afghan soil, lifting of the UN sanctions on their leaders and releasing Taliban prisoners from Afghan jails), but the counter-offer made to them was also enticing. It was the possibility of the inclusion of the Afghan Taliban in a broad-based Kabul government, which was ready to offer governorships of certain eastern and southern provinces to them. The Murree talks were appreciated by Taliban Chief Mullah Omar in his annual Eid message and he used the word ‘legitimate’. In response, Afghan President Ghani welcomed the appreciation and said that the talks were the only way to end the Afghan conflict. Interestingly, on July 29, 2015, the Kabul government announced that Mullah Omar had died on April 23, 2013, from tuberculosis, in Pakistan. The news was shocking for Beijing and Washington and embarrassing for Islamabad. The apparent message was that Pakistan deliberately deceived Kabul, Beijing and Washington. The underlying assumption to this assertion was that Pakistan knew about the death of Mullah Omar but kept it undisclosed owing to certain reasons. The whole Murree peace process got sabotaged, because the representatives of the Afghan Taliban who were speaking at the behest of Mullah Omar were neither sent nor led by Mullah Omar. In principle, by masquerading themselves as genuine, the representatives of the Afghan Taliban did a grave act of injustice to all participants, observers and the host of the Murree talks. On the other hand, Pakistan claimed that, at the official level, it had no idea about Mullah Omar’s death. This point led to the other assumption. That is, Pakistan’s intelligence agencies and the army did not know about the Afghan Taliban, the message of whom was delivered to Afghan President Ghani personally by the then COAS General Raheel Sharif. In other words, if Pakistan was not in the loop, the country’s leadership was not justified in facilitating the Murree talks. In either case of assumptions, the credibility of Pakistan hit rock-bottom. It seemed apparent that no revival of Murree talks would take place and the issue of Afghanistan would be left to Afghanistan itself. The policy speech delivered by US President Donald Trump on August 21 this year indicated that the US government believed in the first assumption, overlooking the fact that General Raheel Sharif retired in November 2016 without fulfilling his pledge of bringing to justice those who facilitated the attack on Army Public School (APS) Peshawar. In Afghanistan, one of the major impediments in the way of the Afghan Taliban to wield power is the Afghan Constitution. In 2013-14, through the Doha office of the Taliban in Qatar, the US asked the Taliban to participate in the 2014 Presidential elections and join the ensuing Kabul government. The Taliban were devoid of any electoral or democratic experience and they might be afraid of rejection through the electoral process. Resultantly, the Taliban refused to participate in the elections, besides declaring it un-Islamic. The next Presidential elections will take place in July 2018, and democracy will get entrenched in Afghanistan further and the space for the Taliban will further shrink. This is the concern which might have prompted the Afghan Taliban to increase attacks on Kabul to crumble it. The Taliban have been looking for a bypass to have a say in Kabul to revive their pre-2001 monopoly on Afghanistan. This does not seem possible, given the fact that; first, Pakistan may not host any more talks for peace in Afghanistan; second, the Afghan Taliban cannot participate in any kind of elections to earn positions in the Kabul government. Third, US President Trump has announced his policy to deal with the Afghan insurgency by sending more forces; and fourth, the next Presidential elections in Afghanistan are approaching. In short, a decisive battle is about to take place in Afghanistan especially in its eastern and western parts, but whether or not Pakistan will be a party to it is unclear. The writer is a freelance columnist and can be reached at qaisarrashid@yahoo.com Published in Daily Times, September 15th 2017.