After the Attack in Peshawar, Will Afghanistan and Pakistan Cooperate?

By   CAROL GIACOMO

One vital element missing from the long fight against the various Taliban groups that operate on both sides of the lawless Afghanistan-Pakistan border has been serious cooperation between the governments in Kabul and Islamabad. The slaughter of 148 students and teachers by Pakistani Taliban at a military-run school in Peshawar on Tuesday ought to change that. But will it?

As Pakistan was consumed by shock and grief over the attack, the country’s army chief, Gen. Raheel Sharif, and the head of the Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency, Lt. Gen. Rizwan Akhtar, moved quickly. They flew to Kabul on Wednesday to meet the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, and Gen. John Campbell, the commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

The Pakistani commanders were seeking Afghanistan’s help in locating the Pakistani Taliban leaders who devised and carried out the massacre. A statement issued by the Pakistani military said Mr. Ghani had assured the Pakistanis that his government would cooperate.

Even before the massacre, Mr. Ghani, a former World Bank official who became president in September, had showed a willingness to work with Pakistan and calm the bilateral hostilities that his predecessor had stoked.

But to get real traction on the terrorism problem, good will can’t just move in one direction. Pakistan is also going to have address Afghanistan’s concerns.

The Afghan Taliban that has been fighting American and Afghan forces in Afghanistan is well known to have its headquarters in Quetta, Pakistan and to have bases along the border. The Pakistani military has long supported the Afghan Taliban as a way of exerting influence in Afghanistan, even while, in recent years, it has fought the Pakistan Taliban.

On Wednesday, Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, insisted that from now on, “there will be no differentiation between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Taliban.” But in the past that’s exactly what Pakistan has done and it has been a fool’s game.

Supporting extremism in any form is a losing proposition. To have some hope of ending brutal Taliban assaults, and the group’s larger goal of trying to bring down the state, Pakistan has to decide that all these terrorists are an existential threat and that Afghanistan can be an ally in combatting them.