The Shrinking of Pakistan Continues

The Blotter:

"In addition to the pullout of Pakistani troops, the 'peace agreement' between Pakistan and the Taliban also provides for the Pakistani army to return captured Taliban weapons and prisoners.

"'What this means is that the Taliban and al Qaeda leadership have effectively carved out a sanctuary inside Pakistan,' said ABC News consultant Richard Clarke, the former White House counter-terrorism director."

Mr. Clarke, I am afraid, misses the real point. What Pakistan does by this deal is acknowledge with deeds, if not words, that the tribal areas of the western borders are not subject to any serious assertion of Pakistani sovereignty.

Pakistan probably already held the record for territorial losses having lost East Pakistan to the independence of Bangladesh, and bits of Kashmir to India and China. Now the Taliban who have not ceded their claim to be the rulers of Afghanistan are recognized as the effective government of the western border regions.

This is also very bad news for US policy. Not the stuff about UBL being welcome in Pakistan so long as he plays elder statesman and not terrorist commander. The real blow is in giving the Taliban a free hand to arm and train on what Pakistan pretends is its own territory. The only thing the fiction of a Pakistan-Afghanistan border in its present location on the maps accomplishes is to give the Taliban a safe harbor.

If this begins to sound like the Viet Cong sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia, the analogy is not too far off the mark. All analogies are imperfect, but this one does catch the diplomatic and tactical, if not the political, dimensions fairly well.