The chief of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, was killed by a US drone near Noshki, thereby creating problems for everyone I can think of. Mullah Mansour might well be out of it, but his organization is not. Mullah Mansour was resisting pressure to negotiate with the Afghan government, something which Pakistan wanted him to do, but which he didn’t. It seems that the failure to talk might cost the Taliban whatever it might, but Pakistan was not getting eight F-16s from the USA. Well, it was having to put up the cash, rather than have the USA itself use aid money for them. Of course, the Taliban should help, shouldn’t they? The new Amir, Mullah Haibatullah Akhund, gave out a message of not negotiating. It was almost as if Mullah Mansour died for nothing.

The Taliban have also learnt that the apparent immunity they have had in Balochistan no longer applies. Plus the Taliban should expect to have as many chiefs killed as the Tehrik Taliban Pakistan, which kept on losing chiefs so long as they were in Pakistan. Note that the current chief, Maulvi Fazlullah, has survived in Afghanistan. There, he is in territory controlled by the USA.

The USA may claim success, but that success has ruined any chances of talks. Incidentally, the US-backed Afghan government has got the same problem. It needs to talk to the Taliban, so that there can be some efforts made to improve law and order.

Pakistan has got more than one embarrassing question to answer. First, what was he doing in Balochistan? More important, why was he carrying a Pakistani ID card (well, that inevitably led to a passport)? And where are we supposed to go from here? Iran? Which Mullah Mansour may have visited. (Someone else embarrassed: the Iranian government).

That latter embarrassment is being passed on to the Pakistani people, in the form of a re-verification of all NADRA-issue ID cards. Well, if you remember the mobile-phone verification, you might get a dim idea of what will happen. Well, that is probably the price of having Afghan refugees on our soil for about 40 years now.

Of course, Mullah Mansour was not the only person killed on Balochistani soil. The DPO Jafferabad, Jahanzeb Kakar, was also shot, and that too in his office. The killers took pictures and sent them to TV channels, trying to make it look like suicide. Well, that may well be the first instance in the history of the Police Service of Pakistan, or its predecessor, the Indian Police Service, of a district police chief being killed in his very office. It is being blamed on tribal sardars not liking a Kakar Pashtoon telling them what to do, but these are the descendants of men who didn’t mind an Englishman doing so. Still, if a DPO is not safe in his own office, the natives are beginning to grow restless.

The British would have called in the Army, but now the Army is busy preparing the cricket team for the tour to England. Yes, our boys are getting training at the Army School of Physical Training, Kakul. I’m sure that our cricket team will find the ability to strip down an LMG in inordinately few seconds very useful against the England bowling. However, I’m sure we could solve PCB Chairman Shehryar Khan’s problems with the boys’ education by getting a captain from the Army. Any number of young men from the nearby Pakistan Military Academy would probably be only too glad to volunteer.

And how can we not see the link between cricket and the military? After all, the military’s nominee for political power is Imran Khan, who was captain of the team that won the World Cup 24 years ago. But now maybe we should wait for the team to be taken over.

Imran must be watching London carefully, and not because of the upcoming tour. Nor because Mian Nawaz Sharif is having open-heart surgery tomorrow. But because a PTI man said to have attacked a TV reporter for the sin of saying that only 50 or 60 people had come to the PTI protest in Mayfair outside Hussain Nawaz’s flat. Obviously, he should have said that there were about 100,000 protesters. He should have realized that the number didn’t just matter to his viewers, but also to the PTI leadership in Pakistan.

I wish Mian Nawaz well, but isn’t he responsible for our nuclear weapon? While he’s on the table, and under the anaesthetic, who will be authorized to approve a launch? Look, it’s bad enough for a poor country to have its PM go under the knife, but for a nuclear power facing a nuclear threat? Well, the knowledge that while Mian Nawaz is out, we depend on Narendra Modi’s forebearance to avoid nuclear war must be very reassuring to us living in Lahore.