US Secretary of State John Kerry has said that the Taliban must be brought to the negotiating table, after the degradation of their capabilities by drone attacks. Answering student’s questions in Addis Ababa on Sunday during his visit there, Mr Kerry made a reference to the negotiations that ended the Vietnam War. Pakistan should take notice of this, as it shows that the strategy of the incoming government appears to be following the same rationale; that talks may be the quickest end to a conflict.
And talks are, indeed, necessary for Pakistan and the US, battered by ten years in the war on terror. As NATO forces withdraw, the Taliban look poised to take advantage of a power vacuum in Afghanistan. In order to avoid an instanteous decent into chaos, the US will have to leave with a negotiated settlement, folding the Taliban into government, from where it hopes that they will engage in a power-struggle in a less violent way, rather than with IEDs.  For Pakistan, the Taliban attacking the state claim to be doing so for an alliance with the US. But a deeper, more resilient hostility against the existence of the state of Pakistan as a democracy, and not a caliphate, is the true gripe that the Pakistani Taliban have. Just as Pakistan and the USA may well be on the same side in the war on terror, but they have different interests going into negotiations, it is the same with the Pakistani Taliban and the Afghan Taliban. The various factions of Taliban fighters may have joined hands against the foreign forces in Afghanistan, but they are likely to break that alliance and turn their focus towards Afghanistan and Pakistan, respectively, once foreign troops have departed. A common foe for now, binds them together.
Of course, the difference is that while the US soldiers will be back home, thousands of miles away, Pakistan is stuck in the same neighbourhood. The most obvious difference is that the USA will be talking to Afghans, who are still aliens and Pakistan must make the careful distinction between those misunderstood citizens of its own, and unrepentant terrorists, who would not recognize the Pakistani state, no matter how many promises are made at the negotiating table. Whereas the USA is seeking a safe exit for its troops, the Pakistani state will be seeking to re-establish its writ. Most importantly, perhaps, while the USA will be seeking guarantees for the Karzai regime and any post-Karzai dispensation, Pakistan is not interested in the survival of a regime which is so implacably opposed to it – and similarly, should restrain and abstain absolutely from forcibly installing a dispensation in Afghanistan for its own gratification, instead of as a true representation of Afghan peoples. As history bears witness, strategic depth in Afghanistan, has earned us nought but the resentment of the Afghanistan people, now and forever opposed to any manner of intervention in their affairs.