Pak media report on Dawar, Wazir an umpteenth attempt to label PTM members as traitors?

By Francesca Marino
Rome [Italy], Mar 11 (ANI): Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) leaders, Mohsin Dawar and Ali Wazir are facilitating anti-Pakistani forces to destabilise Pakistan and fulfilling vested agenda of India through Afghanistan, according to Radio Pakistan.
Their fault? Attending Ashraf Ghani's swearing-in ceremony where, according to the same Radio Pakistan, the two elected members of Parliament "received special protocol by Afghanistan National Army upon their arrival in Kabul". After that the Pakistani government tried to stop their scheduled trip to Kabul, placing their names into an ECL list.
Was this an umpteenth attempt to label PTM members as traitors and enemies of the country? Not really. Because here the one who has been implicitly put in the same league of Mohsin and Ali is the Prime Minister himself.
Imran Khan had in fact just tweeted; "I want to congratulate Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani and look forward to working with him. Pakistan will do everything it possibly can to bring peace and stability in our region". Including, apparently, accusing Ghani and his government of "fulfilling vested agenda of India", unlike Abdullah, probably, who was swearing as President of Afghanistan more or less at the same time but did not welcome PTM members and was not congratulated by the Prime Minister.
Radio Pakistan's position is, according to many, another confirmation of the good old game the real rulers of the country never stopped to play: Sponsoring the Taliban's positions and views while officially following the rules of international diplomacy and treaties.
It is not a secret, in fact, that the Taliban do not recognise the current Afghan government -- considered born by the occupation forces -- and consider parliamentarians to be all puppets of the West. They are not interested in democracy. Their aim, never hidden, is not to 'join the democratic process' so dear to the hypocritical language of diplomacy, but to establish a fundamentalist Emirate.
The same regime, just to remind the forgetful, who stoned adulterous and homosexuals, cut the hands of thieves and destroyed the Bamyan Buddhas because they were blasphemous. It is now useless to discuss the opportunity to have fought from 2001 onwards a war which, in the speeches and in the jagged and hypocritical justifications of those who wanted that war, was also a 'war of civilizations'.
The circle closes perfectly as it started, with the Taliban in power, while everyone pretends to believe that things have changed in the meantime. They have not. Peek just over the border into Waziristan, where the Taliban have been back now for months with the blessing of the Pakistani Army. The Taliban leaders have returned to Waziristan, therefore, and have been given lands and areas of influence.
Not only that, but they have also been put in charge of so-called "Peace Commissions" aimed at healing relations with ordinary citizens who hate them. One of the first acts of the Peace Commission has been to burn five villagers alive. Not only that: Posters have appeared everywhere forbidding the usual good, old things the Taliban regime had accustomed us to: Women cannot go out alone, men can not cut their beards, people cannot listen to music and so on.
Meanwhile, the first problems have already begun: The government of Kabul, the official one, refused to release without guarantee five thousand Taliban, another five thousand individuals ready to fight against the official army. And Pakistan intervenes promptly, inviting Ghani to shut up and do what was decided for him by the Americans and, of course, Pakistan.
Who has been all the time pulling the strings from behind the scenes? Arresting first and then freeing mullah Baradar at the right time, protecting members of the Haqqani network to whom the US, in order to sanction even their moral defeat, allowed to write an op-ed in the New York Times signed by Sirajuddin Haqqani.
Pakistan has moved its pawns brilliantly, expertly dosing blackmail and blandishments. Officially invoking a peace process "Afghan led-Afghan owned", where the only Afghans taken into consideration are evidently those who are members of terrorist organisations, given that the official government, elected by the people despite controversy and fraud, was not given the right to decide practically nothing.
After twenty years of war, the so-called peace deal signed by Americans with the Taliban will change Afghanistan into a jihadi paradise led by jihadi and controlled by the long hand of other jihadis. The 'pax Americana' is likely to cost dear, very dear to the whole world in the coming years. The West is turning its back on a powder keg that it has created and fed for years. A de facto powder keg and a geopolitical powder keg: the Great Game starts again, with old and new players, and will be much, much more dangerous than the previous one.
(Disclaimer: The views expressed in this column are strictly those of the author) (ANI)