THE Western allies of the War on Terror are insisting on a strategy that relies on the failed American prescriptions that have been fed to them by their local allies, even in Afghanistan. Yet even those allies have felt obliged, by the survival instinct if nothing else, to blurt out some of the truth about the US failure in Afghanistan. This is the context within which it is possible to make sense of President Hamid Karzai's tirades, in the latest of which he has blamed the international community for the resurgence of the Taliban, though he ascribed this to their ignoring of Afghan warnings since 2003 of the 'sanctuaries of terrorists', which is his way of blaming Pakistan for the failure in governance on his part. But this also by implication makes Mr Karzai's government a failure for failing to extend its writ beyond the capital. Mr Karzai does not look at his own failures, but prefers to blame Pakistan, which is easier. It was in this context that Pakistan's Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Gen Tariq Majeed met his Australian and British counterparts, as well as the Sri Lankan Foreign and Canadian Defence Ministers on the sidelines of the 7th Shangri-La Dialogue organized by the Institute of Strategic Studies of London in Singapore. There it is assumed that General Majeed pressed home his thesis, expressed to the Dialogue, that there was an alarming growth of poppy cultivation, and both the international community and the Kabul government had to act to break the nexus between the terrorists and drug barons. He called for reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts to be made in tandem with stabilization efforts in the eastern and southern provinces. Why should Pakistan take any of the flak for making agreements that bring peace not just to the northern areas, but reduce terrorist incidents in the whole country? Why do we let the Western countries go on micromanaging our counter-terrorism policies, as General Majeed said? Witness the guest he received yesterday, Adm Michael Mullen, the US JCSC Chairman, whose schedule will be meant to end the new government's approach of negotiation instead of the brute force the USA favours. Admiral Mullen should be sent home with his mission unaccomplished.