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Pakistan Fueled the Taliban and Helped Them Blitz Afghanistan, so Why Is the US Still Funding Our Adversaries?

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For more than two decades, the United States has given Pakistan billions of dollars in military and financial aid in exchange for their help in battling terrorism and radical Islam.

Yet experts say that the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan last month has shown how unreliable a partner Pakistan has been in fighting that war.

Now some are calling on the United States to take a closer look at our relationship and the subversive role the Muslim-majority country continues to play in the region.

Within hours of the Taliban's takeover, Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan praised the Islamic fighters for breaking what he called shackles of slavery.

"When you become a mental slave, then remember that mental slavery is worse than actual slavery," Prime Minister Khan told an audience on August 16. "It is more difficult to break the chains of mental slavery. In Afghanistan, they have just broken the chains of slavery." 

Pakistan's involvement in Afghanistan goes back seven decades, and their support for the Taliban has been crucial since their founding in the 1990s.

"From the very beginning, since its inception, they actually helped in branding the name Taliban," said Sen. Bill Keating (D-MA).

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Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, along with its military, helped fund, train and recruit Taliban fighters. 

"The Taliban would be a shell of itself, its insurgency would be widely ineffective, without Pakistani state support," Bill Roggio, editor of Foundation for Defense of Democracies' "Long War Journal".

Roggio told CBN News that Pakistan's military played a crucial role in the early days of the offensive, allowing a surge of new fighters to cross the border and help the Taliban quickly overrun the country.

"There's credible reports of Pakistani military units donning Taliban uniforms and going and fighting and helping to serve as advisors and fight alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan," Roggio said.
 
Husain Haqqani, who served as Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, says the Taliban's re-emergence is a significant win for Islamabad, even though the Muslim-majority nation was ostensibly America's ally in the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

"Most of the Taliban leaders have lived in Pakistan all this time," Haqqani, who is with the DC-based Hudson Institute, told CBN News. "Their families are in Pakistan, there is an ethnic overlap with Pakistan and so Pakistan now has major say in Taliban's international affairs and that makes Pakistan the winner."

Pakistan's interior minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmad boasted recently that they are the "custodians of the Taliban", adding, "We have taken care of them. They got shelter, education, and a home in Pakistan. We have done everything for them."

That confession comes as some are now questioning Washington's "endless appetite for Islamabad's con games". 

"Pakistan has always been the main problem," Roggio insisted. "The U.S. and the West's inability to coerce Pakistan to end its support for the Taliban is the primary reason why Afghanistan is falling to the Taliban today."

Lawmakers across party lines are demanding more severe consequences for Pakistan's subversive role, especially after getting billions in military and financial aid from American taxpayers, while supporting the Taliban's terrorist activities.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken was questioned on the matter during hearings on Afghanistan earlier this week.

"Pakistan is currently a major non-NATO ally of the United States, giving it a number of benefits, including privileged access to U.S. arms sales," said Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX). "Is it time for the United States to reassess its relationship with Pakistan and reassess its status as a major non-NATO ally?" asked Castro during a question session with the Secretary of State.

"This is going to be one of the things we are looking at in the days and weeks ahead, the role that Pakistan has played over the last 20 years, but also the role that we would like to see it play in the coming years," replied Secretary Blinken.

Meanwhile, 55 percent of Pakistanis in a poll this week said they're happy that the Taliban seized Afghanistan. 

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About The Author

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George
Thomas

Born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and of Indian descent, CBN News’ Senior International Correspondent and Co-Anchor, George Thomas, has been traveling the globe for more than 20 years, finding the stories of people, conflicts, and issues that must be told. He has reported from more than 100 countries and has had a front-row seat to numerous global events of our day. George’s stories of faith, struggle, and hope combine the expertise of a seasoned journalist with the inspiration of a deep calling to tell the stories of the people behind the news. “I’ve always liked discovering & exploring new