Integrity Score 380
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International Community in Afghanistan continues.....
By the beginning of October, it was clear that a strategic shift might occur within Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance declared that it had made an agreement with exiled Afghan King Zahir Shah to overthrow the Taleban. But the fate of Afghanistan did not hang only on internal machinations.
On 6 October, Bush told the Taleban that its time was short after the later rejected suggestions of considering the release of Western aid workers held on charges of proselytizing Christianity as an implied compromise on surrendering Bin Laden. Whatever diplomacy had existed between the US and the Taleban came to an end.
There was only one point in time when Taleban agreed to hand over Bin Laden, provided he would be tried in an Islamic country, but this did not translate into any diplomatic breakthrough.
The most interesting and decisive development to the build up came when Musharraf carefully defended his decision to help the US in its hunt for Osama in a televised address to the nation, invoking the threat from India, the teachings of the prophet, and protecting Afghanistan. Such a decision, on the part of Musharraf, complicated the situation as in the next couple of months the fundamentalists and religious groups of Pakistan who vowed to launch a nation-wide campaign of strikes and protests, expressed widespread discontent. But with Indian leaders’ assured support to the US President, Pakistan had no other option but to agree to the US demands in spite of severe domestic pressures.
To be continued...