These days, Pakistani media and most politicians are unanimous: for Pakistan war on terror is the other people’s war. It fights for American interests rather than its own. Outcast voices of liberal intellectuals, who claim that having joined the war for foreign interests, Pakistan now fights for its own ones, get all the louder against that background. In spite of outward discrepancies, both standpoints are justified, although (as it usually happens) the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
If the USA and the NATO hadn’t invade Afghanistan, by now Taliban would’ve surely controlled a good deal of Pakistan (including Peshawar) if not the whole of it. Given the unpleasant fact of Pakistani nuclear capacity, this outcome may hardly be considered positive by anyone but the Taliban itself. By 2001 Taliban controlled 90 % of Afghani territory. Having assassinated the Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud two days before Sept 11, 2001, Al Qaeda militants have nearly achieved the Taliban dominion over Afghanistan. Lack of a distinct border between Afghanistan and Pakistan would’ve surely made the latter vanish at all. Taliban penetration into the Pashto zone of Pakistan and further could’ve actually become a matter of the nearest future.
