Maybe it’s not just Pakistan’s secret service

Maybe it’s not just Pakistan’s secret service, the ISI, that is reluctant to let go of its Taliban assets. Maybe “persistent accounts of Western forces in Afghanistan using their helicopters to ferry Taliban fighters” shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand (Ahmad Kawoosh, Helicopter rumors refuse to die, Asia Times, Oct. 29, 2009). In December 2009, once again “the alarm bells are ringing in Washington,” this time as Chinese President Hu Jintao “arrived on a Central Asian tour for the formal commissioning of the 1,833-kilometer pipeline connecting gas fields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan (and possibly Russia) to China’s Xinjiang Autonomous Region,” writes M K Bhadrakumar (China resets terms of engagement in Central Asia, Asia Times, Dec. 24, 2009). “For the first time in the post-Soviet period, a truly regional project has taken shape in Central Asia.” Bhadrakumar predicts that “the coming year will see the US intensify efforts to counter China’s influence”: At the US Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee special hearing on Central Asia on December 15, George Krol, the deputy assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, said: “This administration does not consider Central Asia a forgotten backwater, peripheral to US interests. The region is at the fulcrum of key US security, economic, and political interests. It demands attention and respect and our most diligent efforts and the Obama administration [is committed] to this very approach.” [Emphasis added.]