Pakistan To Once Again Hold Peace Talks With The Taliban

Pakistan and the Taliban are to once again hold peace talks yet all previous attempts at a negotiated end to the insurgency have ended in complete failure.  The Taliban is a creation of Pakistan's Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) following the the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan as an attempt to influence the political future of that country.      

According to Pakistani Afghanistan expert Ahmed Rashid, "between 1994 and 1999, an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 Pakistanis trained and fought in Afghanistan" on the side of the Taliban.^[76] Peter Tomsen stated that up until 9/11 Pakistani military and ISI officers along with thousands of regular Pakistani armed forces personnel had been involved in the fighting in Afghanistan.^[77]In 2001 alone, according to several international sources, 28,000-30,000 Pakistani nationals, 14,000-15,000 Afghan Taliban and 2,000-3,000 Al Qaeda militants were fighting against anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan as a roughly 45,000 strong military force.^{[23][24][78][79]} Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf – then as Chief of Army Staff – was responsible for sending thousands of Pakistanis to fight alongside the Taliban and Bin Laden against the forces of Ahmad Shah Massoud.^[24][60][80] Of the estimated 28,000 Pakistani nationals fighting in Afghanistan, 8,000 were militants recruited in madrassas filling regular Taliban ranks.^[23] A 1998 document by the U.S. State Department confirms that "20–40 percent of [regular] Taliban soldiers are Pakistani."^[60] The document further states that the parents of those Pakistani nationals "know nothing regarding their child's military involvement with the Taliban until their bodies are brought back to Pakistan."^[60] According to the U.S. State Department report and reports by Human Rights Watch, the other Pakistani nationals fighting in Afghanistan were regular Pakistani soldiers especially from the Frontier Corps but also from the army providing direct combat support.^[19][60]Human Rights Watch wrote in 2000:

Of all the foreign powers involved in efforts to sustain and manipulate the ongoing fighting [in Afghanistan], Pakistan is distinguished both by the sweep of its objectives and the scale of its efforts, which include soliciting funding for the Taliban, bankrolling Taliban operations, providing diplomatic support as the Taliban's virtual emissaries abroad, arranging training for Taliban fighters, recruiting skilled and unskilled manpower to serve in Taliban armies, planning and directing offensives, providing and facilitating shipments of ammunition and fuel, and ... directly providing combat support.^[19]

In February of 2009 Pakistan and the Taliban reached a ceasefire agreement following a victory by the army.   Under the terms the Sharia law would be allowed with supervision by the Pakistani government.  President Asif Ali Zardari changed the terms of the agreement allowing for appeals of convictions to Pakistan's Supreme Court that change would lead to a second battle in the Swat valley.


Pakistan's government, military and the ISI have only themselves to blame for the Taliban insurgency within their country.

Pakistani government representatives have failed to meet Taliban negotiators in Islamabad as preliminary peace efforts got off to a chaotic start.
The government side said before talks began they wanted clarification from the team named by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Furious TTP negotiators expressed disappointment at the news.
The two sides had been due to start charting a "roadmap" for talks.
The militants have been waging an insurgency inside Pakistan since 2007.
The government's lead negotiator, Irfan Siddiqui, made clear he still expected talks to go ahead, but sought more information on the make-up of the Taliban team and how much authority it had to negotiate.