Is Pakistan Winning Against Taliban?

In November 2001, as the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance and their American allies closed a net around the collapsing Taliban regime in Afghanistan, Pakistani planes flew into the Taliban stronghold of Kunduz and evacuated hundreds of Pakistani intelligence officers, Taliban commanders, and al-Qaeda personnel.

This was after then-Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf had pledged support for America’s efforts to destroy al-Qaeda and overthrow the Taliban. The United States knew about the airlift and allowed it to happen. Reasoning that it was better to maintain the fiction that Pakistan was wholly on its side and to cajole whatever assistance it could from Islamabad, Washington declined even to monitor who disembarked from the plane when it landed safely in Pakistan. “It is believed that more foreign terrorists escaped from Kunduz than made their escape later from Tora Bora,” writes Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid in his 2008 book Descent Into Chaos, referring to Osama bin Laden’s mountain stronghold from which he safely fled in December 2001.