"The feeling is there is nothing we can do to make a difference," the senior Pak official said. "They are scapegoating Pakistain for their failure to bring peace in Afghanistan despite more than a decade of conflict."
In response, senior U.S. administration officials would only say that Washington has asked Pakistain to take "specific" action against the Taliban
...the Pashtun equivalent of men...
and the Haqqani network
, which have been blamed for recent violent attacks in Kabul, Afghanistan. The officials tell The Cipher Brief that Pakistain’s intelligence service and military have failed to sever ties with either myrmidon group and continue to protect their top leaders within Pak territory."We have seen Pakistain take some modest steps that appear to be responsive to some of our concerns, but we haven’t seen the decisive action against the Taliban and Haqqani network," one of the officials said. "They are doing the minimum necessary to alleviate the pressure."
The he-said, she-said highlights the continued tension between the Trump administration and Islamabad that spiked in January when President Donald Trump
...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States...
greeted the new year by tweeting that Pakistain has shown "nothing but lies and deceit" in return for U.S. aid.
Two Pak officials say that since that tweet, Islamabad has turned over more than two-dozen Death Eaters to Afghanistan who were on an earlier list of Death Eaters the U.S. asked Pakistain to "lawfully detain." That includes the big shots of the Haqqani network, the official said. Siraj Haqqani is at the top of that list, as he’s wanted by the FBI for his roles in running military operations for both the Haqqani network and the Taliban, according to Bill Roggio of FDD’s Long War Journal.