{"id":339009,"date":"2010-02-19T08:50:21","date_gmt":"2010-02-19T13:50:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=77030"},"modified":"2010-02-19T08:50:21","modified_gmt":"2010-02-19T13:50:21","slug":"the-pakistani-strategic-shift-looks-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/339009","title":{"rendered":"The Pakistani Strategic Shift Looks Real"},"content":{"rendered":"

A great piece in The Washington Post<\/a> gives real reason to believe that the apparently-torrid pace of arrests in Pakistan of Afghan Taliban leaders<\/a> is the result of a real strategic shift by Pakistani leadership that cultivated and then tolerated the Taliban for years. The arrest of deputy Taliban commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar<\/a> was planned for weeks, the result of increased integration — particularly with regard to surveillance technology — between the U.S. and Pakistani intelligence apparatuses. And that, in turn, was the broader result of the Obama administration’s year-long effort to convince the Pakistanis that it would cater to their interests, not merely expect Pakistan to cater to America’s. The Post:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Pakistan’s decision to go after the Afghan Taliban leadership reflects a quiet shift underway since last fall, said officials from both countries, who cited a November letter from President Obama to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari as a turning point.<\/p>\n

The letter, which was hand-delivered by U.S. national security adviser James L. Jones, offered additional military and economic assistance and help easing tensions with India, a bitter enemy of Pakistan. With U.S. facilitation, the Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers have agreed to meet next week, the first high-level talks between the two countries since terrorist attacks in Mumbai in late 2008.<\/p>\n

The letter also included an unusually blunt warning that Pakistan’s use of insurgent groups to pursue its policy goals would no longer be tolerated.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That Barack Obama sure doesn’t know how to deal with terrorism, does he?<\/p>\n

Update<\/em>: Although maybe that Baradar capture wasn’t quite so thoroughly planned<\/a>…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A great piece in The Washington Post gives real reason to believe that the apparently-torrid pace of arrests in Pakistan of Afghan Taliban leaders is the result of a real strategic shift by Pakistani leadership that cultivated and then tolerated the Taliban for years. The arrest of deputy Taliban commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4314,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-339009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4314"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339009\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}