Because, what followed OBL was Mullah Mansour, taken out in Balochistan
...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it...
‐ not in any god-forsaken corner of the contiguous Fata belt where the writ of the state is only sporadic. That would have at least given us face-saving argument. No, here he was in Balochistan, blazing the holy trail to the ’Quetta Shura
...Mullah Omar's command center, located in Quetta, that the Pak govt hasn't been able to find since its establishment in November, 2001. Honest...
’. There is another story doing the rounds that he was actually travelling from Iran into Afghanistan and was betrayed by the Iranian intelligence. This story goes that the Iranians did that as a favour because of the Modi visit, appeasing Indian sensitivities on the Kalbhushan Yadav episode. Whatever may be the case, he was found in broad daylight on Pak soil and became an exhibit.
I don’t even want to recount the car rental company of Quetta who somehow knew he was crossing Taftan and were ready to motor him into Afghanistan. What facilitation ‐ despite there being an equally accessible border between Iran and Afghanistan. Or is Iran far better at controlling its borders?
Just a while back our ’old man’ at national security revealed that the Quetta Shura was indeed our baby and that was how we exercised control and influence over them. The Mansour episode just proved that contention except that the element of influence was a thing of the past. This was a typical case of one becoming a victim of his rhetoric. Influence exercised through familial extensions is at best fluid and unworthy of strategic consideration. That is why the peace talks have failed; because Mansour always had his own agenda. As will the next man. And that will complete the cycle beyond which the broadly termed entity, the Taliban, will fragment further.
This will fail everyone lost on the road to discovering peace, including the US. The more the Taliban fragment, the more will others ‐ including the IS ‐ gain. The more Al-Qaeda and the IS gain, the more will the US lose. Forget the region; it is in a perpetual mess and will remain so for a long time to come. Back at home, Pakistain is a mess ‐ a royal mess; gains by Operation Zarb-e-Azb
..the Pak offensive against Qaeda in Pakistain and the Pak Taliban in North Wazoo. The name refers to the sword of the Prophet (PTUI!)...
brought to naught.
The esteemed foreign secretary, a man of great motivation, recently desired that Afghanistan rather than Pakistain would do better to do something about their Taliban problem. It must be said that the FS got what he desired. A few more and Afghanistan may well be on the road to doing something about it.
Wait a while, we will soon have Messrs Haqqani and Zwahiri too paraded dead or alive on the Pak soil. What bloody embarrassment.