JOIN US“The western part of Pakistan, the lawless areas, are the epicentre of the issues that threaten our country,” US special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday. “They directly link to the Taliban but they’re in Pakistan. We have made real progress in Pakistan in the last year and a half,” he said in response to a question about Pakistan’s role in the situation in Afghanistan.
“But the focus is so overwhelmingly on Afghanistan… that we have lost — we haven’t even recognised the movement in Pakistan across the board: economically, politically, strategically.”
Pakistan’s role in reconciliation in Afghanistan “is ambiguous and opaque at this point”, Holbrooke said. “It is something that we want to learn more about...”
“But they have five major insurgencies going on in their country: The Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Taliban, who are the trainers of the Times Square bomber, LeT, the odious Haqqani network, al-Qaeda itself, and several other groups. So their situation is enormously complicated and unique to Pakistan,” he said.