A battle-hardened Soviet journalist told me in a convivial conversation in Moscow circa 1989 that he wished to metamorphose into a fly and perch on Unter den Linden, Berlin's grandest boulevard — as in a Franz Kafka novel. Mikhail Gorbachev had just arrived in East Berlin on October 7 as the guest of honour at the gala parade to celebrate 40 years of communist rule in East Germany. By then, he had become communism's leading agnostic. My good friend's journalistic instinct was to eavesdrop on Mr. Gorbachev's improbable conversation with his East German counterpart, Erich Honecker. Mr. Gorbachev's hard-hitting message, overshadowing East Germany's birthday celebrations, was “life punishes those who come too late.” Indeed, Mr. Honecker was forced to step down 11 days later, the Berlin Wall was breached on November 9 and, within a year, the German Democratic Republic was no more.
Diplomatic engagements can be deceptive. The politics of reconciliation with the Taliban has all along been deceptive — and remains so. Indian journalists interpreted that the visiting U.S. Special Representative, Richard Holbrooke, ruled out the participation by the dreaded “Haqqani network” in the Taliban leadership in any Kabul set-up. Yet, he merely said he could not countenance circumstances under which the Haqqanis will become amenable to reconciliation — that is, it is up to the U.S.' sub-contractors in Rawalpindi, the Pakistani military leadership, to show otherwise.
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