Though many media reports and analyses tend to go easy on the historical background of the Taliban phenomenon, as widely felt and feared today, Hillary Clinton’s recent talk before a Congressional committee admits the responsibility of US in Pakistan’s current peace crisis. Admitting that the US was ‘partly responsible’ for Pakistan’s existing situation, the US Secretary of State said that fingers may be pointed at Pakistan but ‘we’ (the US) are to take the responsibility for contributing to the problems that the US and Pakistan are facing now.

Mrs. Clinton also admitted that the US has a history of ‘moving in and out’ of Pakistan and how the Taliban, they are now fighting, were funded by the US two decades back in time – in order to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Mrs. Clinton stated that the US administration at that time had a deal with Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies and it was ‘not a bad investment’. She, however, claimed that the US left Pakistan after the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan and had nothing to do with the country’s affairs.

Mrs. Clinton also mentioned that Wahabis from Saudi Arabia and fundamentalist Muslims from other states were called as ‘mujahideen’ to serve the purpose of beating the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The USSR collapsed due to this strategy of the US, losing billions of dollars in the war. But what is happening now in Pakistan is the result of the same policy. This statement from the US Secretary of State acquits Pakistan partly from the burden of breeding/supporting the Taliban and at the same time explains why the US must keep its political commitment to Pakistan till the country’s turmoil is over. Further, the US needs to elaborate an effective political-economic policy that can salvage Pakistan’s troubled economy and peace situation.