The red area of northern Pakistan are tribal regions and the route into Kabul passes along them and ultimately through them. There is no advantage to that.
I suppose President Obama had to try to make it work, but, to believe the warlord culture of Pakistan is ever going to change is decades in the offing. That area of Pakistan is like Somalia, there is little to no sovereign governance and whenever the Taliban or al Qaeda or 'militant of the day' decides they need supplies they attack convoys of trucks. I never though Bush/Rumsfeld's appeasement of Pakistan to provide air and land access to Afghanistan was a good idea. I always believed supply, then Musharraf, with huge amounts of money was ridiculous. Those monies indicated to me this wasn't about peace or alliances so much as money.
Pakistan has too many internal problems to ever sincerely care about what occurs in Afghanistan. Heck, it doesn't care about the USA either, except, for whatever monies come their way.
Zadari is the most decent President Pakistan has ever had, but, his ability to tame the country is limited. There are sincere problems that need solving, but, they have to be solved by the country itself. We are better off out of it. Karzai is not going to have it easy in that part of the world once NATO exits, but, I believe the Afghan people are more capable of self-governance as a sovereign country than Pakistan is or will be in the near future.
I suppose President Obama had to try to make it work, but, to believe the warlord culture of Pakistan is ever going to change is decades in the offing. That area of Pakistan is like Somalia, there is little to no sovereign governance and whenever the Taliban or al Qaeda or 'militant of the day' decides they need supplies they attack convoys of trucks. I never though Bush/Rumsfeld's appeasement of Pakistan to provide air and land access to Afghanistan was a good idea. I always believed supply, then Musharraf, with huge amounts of money was ridiculous. Those monies indicated to me this wasn't about peace or alliances so much as money.
Pakistan has too many internal problems to ever sincerely care about what occurs in Afghanistan. Heck, it doesn't care about the USA either, except, for whatever monies come their way.
Zadari is the most decent President Pakistan has ever had, but, his ability to tame the country is limited. There are sincere problems that need solving, but, they have to be solved by the country itself. We are better off out of it. Karzai is not going to have it easy in that part of the world once NATO exits, but, I believe the Afghan people are more capable of self-governance as a sovereign country than Pakistan is or will be in the near future.
...As the US President (click here) said that "bad moments" were likely to come in the course of the alliance's withdrawal, an unnamed UK official was quoted as saying that it was "unrealistic to assume that Afghanistan is going to be completely secure and there is no possibility of a terrorist threat re-emerging".
The comments came as the Nato summit in Chicago veered off script yesterday, as attempts to resolve Pakistan's blockade of Afghan supply routes fell apart and Mr Obama warned the country's leaders: work with us or run the risk of being "consumed by the extremism" that is in its midst....
