What happened in Nushki? Who was Muhammad Wali of Killa Abdullah? Who tipped off against Mullah Mansour? What was he doing in Iran? Is it true that Taliban leadership had developed relations with Russia and Iran? Was Pakistan on board or this single mistake cost Mansur his life?
Was the chief’s assassination a random military move or a viler plan to destabilize and oust Taliban to rescue ISIS factions out of ventilators in Afghanistan? Do the same powers that turned Afghanistan into a global theatre of war again need blood of Pashtuns and Pakistanis to counter the same enemy?
How did Americans come so deep into Pakistan and manage to pickup Bin Laden after a gaudy hour-long rampage near an elite military training school, whereas the same country safeguards one of the greatest nuclear arsenals almost against the whole world? Is Seymour Hersh right that Pakistan and US staged the Bin Laden show that almost single handedly won President Obama his second term?
Are US and Iran friends now? Why did US go to unprecedented lengths to sign a nuclear deal with Iran while fraying two of its strongest allies namely Israel and Saudi Arabia? How come Saudi Arabia emerged as an ally of Israel? What happened to the Palestinian cause and where have the mighty Al-Fatah and Hamas gone?
How can a terror organization like ISIS manage to survive in the same land where mighty dictators with proper militaries collapsed like a sand castle? Who orchestrated 9/11? Is Turkey an ally of Europe, US or Russia? Was the refugee crisis deliberately triggered by some to rattle the prospering Europe? Who’s the beneficiary of the chaos in Europe? Who built draconian terror organizations like Al-Qaeda, Taliban and ISIS? Whose purpose these organizations are serving? Is Snowden a hero or a villain?
One feels totally lost in one’s quest for the truth, which seems to have many faces in this wilderness of mirrors, where as Babbit said ‘no fact goes unchallenged’.
We have to dig a little deeper to understand what is happening in the region, which has been serving as both the graveyard and birthplace of empires. It was reported a few months back that Mansour had held a secret meeting with Russian President Viladimir Putin while surprising the whole world.
However, the biggest question remained as to how come he grew so brave that he managed to meet Russians without the consent of his handlers. And if it was with their consent then perhaps his handlers wanted to make Americans jealous and wanted to show them that if they have fallen in love with India then the forgotten love could also look for new options.
The Afghan Taliban has now appointed a new leader Mullah Haibatullah Akhunzada, a prominent religious scholar who might end the restlessness among different ranks of the Taliban, but will continue to haunt the future of Taliban in the region. But still the newly appointed leader is a scholar instead of a fighter, which minimizes the quivering opportunity of disagreement among Taliban. But still people who dreamed of the leadership of Taliban might not have given up.
Nonetheless, it has to be determined whether it would be pro or anti-Pakistan and whether the assassination will weaken the Taliban and benefit the allies and Afghan government. Meanwhile, the master planers might be working on a plot to totally wipe out Taliban from the scene and merge those remaining into the more violent and meaner beasts in order to pave way for a proxy war against Russia and its arch-ally Iran.
Mullah Haibatullah Akhunzada’s appointment is not a coup. He has issued a fatwa to justify the military and terrorists operations. So it is premature to say that it is going to make any difference and other ranks are going to be united as other speculations are still on the move.
Sources close to the whole situation are telling me disturbing stories, claiming that a large number of jihadi seminaries both in Pakistan and Afghanistan have openly or secretly pledged their allegiance to ISIS and they are mustering up energy to show their muscle at the right time.
The Tashfeen Malik episode, surfacing of female seminary students pledging loyalty to ISIS and the trumpets from the world-famous Lal Mosque are a few glimpses of the grim future that might be on the way.
A large number of splinter groups of the mainstream jihadi organizations such as Taliban, Jaish-e-Muhammad, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Harkat-ul-Ansar, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen are already living across the border and are willing to outperform each other in a strange sense of competition and jealousy among themselves.
A more naïve explanation for the emergence of the stronger ISIS in the region, however, would be a weakened Taliban and other jihadis with ISIS being the natural beneficiaries of the vacuum. The local and international intelligence agencies like CIA and ISI could not see this coming, because they already had their nose dipped into deep water.
US and Afghan governments were of the view that Mullah Mansour was halting the peace talks due to his aggressive nature. At the same time he seemed to be the biggest hurdle in the way of the growing ISIS impact in Afghanistan.
Despite their claims of hating Saudi Arabia or other gulf states, the ISIS and Al-Qaeda like organizations are actually fighting Saudi and its allies’ war in Syria, Yemen and even in Af-Pak region. And we must not forget or rule out the Al-Qaeda factor in our own region, in the post Bin Laden scenario as his second in command Aiman al Zawahri, new Al-qaeda chief, Bin-Laden’s son, the so-called Uzbek group and many others still lurk around.
They are said to have been involved in terror activities like Mehran Base attack, high-profile abductions such as that of Shahbaz Taseer, the scary prison break operations, abduction of foreigners, suicide bombings…
One calls upon the sane leadership of the security organizations to please save the country and the region as a whole from further bloodbath, because this nation has already seen too much. Meanwhile, sitting in a deep state of meditation one can only hope that all this chaos ends and the blood thirsty demons among us have some mercy on both the intelligent life and the planet.
If we fail to stop this horrific cycle of miseries and violence, survivors would be asking at the end whether unleashing World War III like chaos upon people merely to satisfy the ego and imperialistic dreams of a few is worth all that.
