Finally, Pakistan decided to call a spade a spade. Messages sent to the ‘unrecognized’ interim govern­ment in Kabul through diplomatic chan­nels; offering amnesty to all ‘con­cerned’; blocking trade routes; or sending the undocumented Afghans back home would not help in making the Taliban un­derstand their responsibilities towards the export of terrorism to Pakistan. In his recent Congres­sional hearing, Assistant Secretary of State Donald Lu, inter alia, confirmed that the ‘current greatest terrorist threat to Pakistan emanated from Afghanistan.’

In addition, Afghanistan was time and again reminded of Pakistan’s decades-old support to the Afghan cause but to no avail. Nothing seemed to have been working as the death toll in Pakistan kept on increasing. Even the ‘unconfirmed’ attack inside its territory last year would not help Kabul understand the gravity of the matter. Perhaps, the recent shaha­dat of seven soldiers in North Waziristan proved to be the tipping point to convey an unequivocal message - stop patroniz­ing TTP, a globally designated terrorist organization, and using them as a proxy against Pakistan. Enough is enough.

Hence, Pakistan had no hesitation in officially confirming that its military car­ried out intelligence-based aerial strikes inside Afghanistan. The stated objective? To punish all those terrorists responsi­ble for killing hundreds of civilians and security forces in cross-border raids.

The absence of any offensive response except from Kabul and a straightfor­ward acquiescence thereof by the Unit­ed States provided a kind of validity to the aerial strikes. In any case, in a world where firing of missiles inside each oth­er’s territories or killing ‘terrorists’ through covert operations abroad or for that matter staying in a country for two-decades to combatting........

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