The cost of the “welcome” offered by the extremist Taliban and Al-Qaeda members to US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton in Pakistan goes beyond 300 dead and injured. The carnage caused by a booby-trapped car in Peshawar, which coincided with another huge strike in the heart of Kabul, was directed by the Taliban against UN employees, in order to devastate the role of the international organization in Afghanistan. The carnage is the most recent evidence that Al-Qaeda and Taliban have moved to the phase of counter- and intensive offense, so as to challenge the American and NATO forces and reveal their impotence in achieving any victory… The "low" spirits of the Western world in the war on terrorism will inexorably reinforce the non-military option in facing the organization and the movement, while American President Barack Obama is still "reluctant" and cautious in determining the "new strategy" for fighting in Afghanistan. While this caution is justified by his concern over lessening the losses of the Americans in Afghanistan, after these losses reached their climax since the toppling of the Taliban regime in 2001, this same caution has encouraged the movement's fighters to manipulate Washington's reluctance and thus entice its soldiers and expand the lists of its dead and number of coffins. It appears clear that Taliban responds with missiles to Obama's administration's offer to allow the movement's "moderates" to join the Afghani Government that will be formed after turning the page of the file of rigged elections. The answer is that there are "no moderates" among the ranks of Taliban, and the war is to come to its end. But how will the NATO forces achieve today what they have failed to achieve for eight years, while President Hamid Karzai's administration is accused of nurturing corruption and undermining the credibility of the American objectives in Afghanistan, instead of strengthening the growing army? Taliban benefits from Karzai's reputation, who is accused of forging the elections, while the Americans leak a story saying that his brother received money from the C.I.A. While the Afghani President represents a predicament for Washington, the latter will face a bigger quandary when it experiments the "new strategy" to withdraw from the sand-fire, as long as Taliban considers that the bad reputation of the ruler in Kabul can improve its image, even if its suicide attacks claimed the lives of many innocent civilians. The movement also relies on the "mistakes" of the NATO, which have become daily events. But this certainly does not infer which side gains popularity among the Afghans, who represent fuel for daily killings. Some of them will be able to accuse the American troops - whom Obama's administration will decide to deploy to heavily-populated areas – of using the civilians as "human shields" to protect themselves against the attacks of Taliban and Al-Qaeda and their suicide bombers… The same trap will incite the organization and the movement to accelerate the pace of "pursuing" the Western forces. This will increase the pressures put by the public opinion in Europe and the United States in order to end the war. But at what price? Is it by abandoning "victory" to those for whom the United States mobilized its troops to topple in Kabul in 2001? Washington left for Karzai the civil aspect of managing Afghanistan, so that it becomes, along with its allies, in charge of the fighting in the field. Failure is a clear result of the first part of the mission, and Obama's administration fears that the fate of the war will also be a failure, after many years of destruction and blood, and after squandering tens of billions of dollars in vain. The only alternative for Washington is to talk to Taliban, i.e. accept to normalize its relations with Al-Qaeda's ally! But what are the region's alternatives, as the very thought of Taliban's rule of its "emirate" in Afghanistan once again seems to be a sign of an imminent danger that threatens the destruction of the nuclear state of Pakistan and leaves it an easy prey for the nuclear…Al-Qaeda. Isn't the pursuit of generals in the heart of Islamabad to liquidate them in daylight an indication of a new period, after challenging the Pakistani Army to break into its command's headquarters in Rawalpindi? When this army pursues Taliban in Waziristan, the movement responds in the cities. The army reiterates its confidence of its control of the nuclear arsenal, but it is certainly not confident of the American pledges after Washington quickly accepted anything that reinforces India's power, while it remained hesitant for so long with Pakistan, under the pretext of the bitter experiences of Islamabad's support of the war on Taliban and Al-Qaeda. The eyes of a confused Obama are on Afghanistan, whose caves have beaten the greatest power in the world… The region's heart is with Pakistan whose state is threatened to be assassinated by the caves of the Afghani Al-Qaeda as well.
