US Acting Assistant Secretary of State was in town last week to consolidate the momentum that was achieved at Tashkent. Though it is still debatable as to what the gains exactly were given that the Taliban — upon whom the Kabul peace deal entirely hinges — decided to stay away from the international powwow. The Foreign Office, however, was firmly sticking to the script; saying how Islamabad and Washington have resolved to tackle all militant outfits that target both sides of the Af-Pak border. Yet bluntly put, this is all rather resembling a case of swings-and-roundabouts. For it was not so long ago that the Americans were noting how they could live with it if Pakistan just, you know, quietly nudged the usual suspects across the western border. Until, even more recently, they conceded that the latter could stay put as long as Islamabad managed to keep them out of trouble. If any of this is supposed to instil some sort of enthusiasm among Pakistanis it has been, to use modern parlance, an epic fail; being more a case of SNAFU than slam-dunk. The man who sees himself as potentially coming to Kabul’s rescue is a well-known Pakistani militant. Fazlur Rehman Khalil, back at the beginning of this year, was part of a broad group of religious scholars who signed a fatwa denouncing extremist violence against this country as being un-Islamic. That this was just Pakistan-specific prompted censure from President Ghani; leading Khalil to offer to hop on over to Kabul and help the government draw up its own religious edict. Which may or may not have been deliberately missing the point. However, this may well be part of Khalil’s manufactured reinvention. For mere days after the 9/11 attacks Washington moved to label his (renamed) group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM) a terrorist organisation. Indeed, as recently as 2014, the US was talking of Khalil running an Al Qaeda training camp in eastern Afghanistan; ostensibly tasked with driving out foreign forces from that country. After all, he was known to be a close aide to Bin Laden. He, along with Hafiz Saeed, signed the latter’s 1998 fatwa calling on the faithful to attack American interests whenever, wherever. Yet fast-forward to the present and Khalil is one of the protégés of the Pakistan military’s mainstreaming project. He launched his own political party last summer under the Islahe-e-Watan Party banner, which is all set to contest elections this summer on the mandate of strict Sharia law. This should come as no surprise given that he has long been in khaki pockets. Meaning that it was to him that the security apparatus turned back in 2010 when it was feeling its way towards possible negotiations with Al Qaeda to put to an end the spilling of Pakistani blood. This was the same time that saw the PMLN trying to do the same; though of course the chief minister was reportedly only interested in sparing Punjab. And even then, this only referred to ‘governmental jurisdiction’. Meaning that Islamabad would be left to fend for itself. All of which suggests that Pakistan and the US are no closer to ‘fixing’ Afghanistan. One sticking point all along has been the American refusal to admit its own role in where the region is today. For like the Haqqani Network — HuM also fought alongside US forces against the Soviet occupation. It is hoped therefore that Washington at least listens more carefully when the Saudi Crown Prince puts the blame for the spread of Wahhabism firmly on its doorstep. For all those swings-and-roundabouts are making Pakistanis dizzy. * Published in Daily Times, April 1st 2018.