Pakistan, theoretically an American ally during the war, was the main sponsor of the Afghan Taliban and regards their victory as a mutual achievement. But now what will he do with his influence in that country.

Just days after the Taliban seized Kabul, its flag was already flying atop a major mosque in the Pakistani capital. It was a defiant gesture that sought to annoy the Americans. But it was also an indication of who the real winners are in the 20-year war in Afghanistan.

On the surface, Pakistan was an ally of the United States in the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. In the past two decades, his military obtained tens of billions of dollars in American aid, although Washington acknowledged that much of the money disappeared in undeclared activities.

However, since this relationship began after the September 11 attacks, it has been plagued by deceptions and fragmented interests. It should not be forgotten that the Afghan Taliban against whom the Americans were fighting are largely the brainchild of the Pakistan Intelligence Service (ISI), which cared for and protected US assets throughout the war. the Taliban inside Pakistan.

According to tribal leaders, in the past three months, as the Taliban rampaged through Afghanistan , the Pakistani army received a wave of new fighters on the border, from shelters within Pakistan. It was the coup de grace for the American-trained Afghan security forces.

"The Pakistanis and the ISI believe they have won in Afghanistan," said Robert Grenier, a former CIA station chief in Pakistan. However, Grenier cautions that Pakistanis should be careful what they wish for. "If the Afghan Taliban become the leaders of a pariah state, which is likely, Pakistan will be tied to them."

Pakistan's already shaky reputation in the West is likely to plummet now that the Taliban have taken control of Afghanistan. Petitions to sanction Pakistan have already circulated on social media. Receiving no foreign funding, Pakistan is forced to rely on the jihadists' drug trade, encouraged by the new rulers in Kabul. Undoubtedly, a Taliban-ruled state on its border will embolden the Taliban and other Islamist militants inside Pakistan.

Let us not forget that relations with the United States, which are already experiencing a cooling down, will deteriorate much more. Aside from balancing Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, Americans now have less incentive to do business with Pakistan.

So the question for Pakistanis is: what will they do with the dilapidated country they have as a trophy. Pakistan, along with Russia and China, is already helping to fill the gap left by the Americans. The embassies of these three countries have remained open since the Taliban took over Kabul.

One of the new rulers of Afghanistan is Khalil Haqqani, a Taliban leader and Pakistani ally who often visited the Pakistani army headquarters in Rawalpindi.

Known to the US intelligence service as Al Qaeda's Taliban emissary, Haqqani showed up in Kabul last week as its new chief of security, blatantly armed with a US-made M4 rifle and a protection squad dressed in military gear. American combat.

"Governing a country devastated by war will be a great test and an impressive challenge, especially since the Taliban have been a belligerent force and none of them are experts in governing," wrote this week Malleeha Lohdi, who served as Pakistan's ambassador to Pakistan. the United Nations, in a column in The Dawn newspaper.

During the war, the Americans tolerated the double game of Pakistan because they did not see many alternatives and preferred to fight a chaotic war in Afghanistan to having to fight with a country like Pakistan that possesses nuclear weapons. In addition, Pakistan's ports and airfields provided the main entry points and supply lines for US military equipment needed in Afghanistan.

Pakistan helped, although, according to US officials, its spy agency provided the Taliban with planning support, training expertise, and sometimes field advice throughout the war.

Although Pakistan was apparently an ally of the United States, it always worked for its own interests, as all countries do. Among those interests was not a broad American presence on its border, an autonomous Afghanistan with a democratic government that could not control even a strong, centralized military.

Rather, Pakistan's goal in Afghanistan was to create a sphere of influence to hinder its archenemy: India. Pakistanis insist that India uses separatist groups such as the Balochistan Liberation Army, which operates from shelters in Afghanistan, to incite dissidents in Pakistan.

"The Pakistani military believes that Afghanistan is a strategic point against India, which is its obsession," said Bruce Riedel, former adviser on South Asia affairs to the governments of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, "The United States encouraged India to to support the US-backed Afghan government after 2001, which exacerbated the army's paranoia. "

Pakistanis were outraged that former President Barack Obama visited India in 2015, but boycotted Pakistan in notable ways, Riedel said.

During a visit to Washington this spring, Moeed Yusuf, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan's national security adviser, emphasized the need to eliminate the Indian presence in Afghanistan, according to the Americans who met with him.

Yusuf is regarded as a moderate leader on the Pakistani political spectrum, and the Americans said they were surprised by his vehemence about India's role in Afghanistan.

When Indian diplomats were among the first foreigners to evacuate from Kabul, the Pakistani press interpreted their departure as a singular victory.

The link between the Pakistanis and the triumphant Haqqani was unquestionable and indispensable to the victory of the Taliban, said Douglas London, former CIA chief in the fight against terrorism in South and West Asia.

Pakistani Army leader Qamar Javed Bajwa and ISI director Hameed Faiz met with Haqqani "on a recurring basis," London said. Haqqani's extended family has long been known to live in the areas of Pakistan along the Afghan border.

"The United States pushed Bajwa all the time to give them Khali Haqqani and two other Haqqani leaders, but Bajwa always said, 'Tell us where they are,'" explained London, who wrote The Recruiter , an upcoming autobiography of their years at the CIA. "My favorite quote is when Bajwa says, 'Just come to my office and we'll go by helicopter to pick you up.'

According to London, Pakistan's aid covered a range of services. There were safe havens in the Pakistani border areas, particularly in the city of Quetta, which housed Afghan Taliban fighters and their families. Medical services treated wounded combatants, sometimes in hospitals in Karachi and Peshawar, the main cities. The freedom the Haqqani had in Pakistan to run lucrative real estate deals, smuggling and other activities kept their war machine going.

London mentioned that, for fear of being caught in Afghanistan with some irrefutable evidence for the Americans, the ISI almost always kept its operations out of the conflict.

The ISI also provided assets to the Taliban to raise their international level. Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar traveled with a Pakistani passport to attend the peace talks in Doha, Qatar, and to meet in Tianjin, China, with Wang Yi, the foreign minister.

"The Afghan Taliban would not be where they are without the help of the Pakistanis," London said.

Washington's relations with Pakistan cooled after, in 2001, the US Navy Seals assassinated Osama Bin Laden in a safe house located near the Pakistani military academy. Top US officials stopped going to Pakistan and cut back on aid.

But the Obama administration never publicly said what it suspected: that the Pakistani military knew from the beginning that bin Laden lived with his family in Abbottabad, one of Pakistan's best-known cities.

Had Washington declared that bin Laden was there, Pakistan would have been legally a sponsor of terrorism and would be subject to mandatory sanctions like Iran, said Riedel, a former South Asian adviser during the Bush and Obama administrations.

That would have forced the Americans to end their support for Pakistan which, in turn, would have led Pakistan to halt the transit of American war supplies through its territory, increasing the cost of the war.

The bin Laden raid played on the Pakistani military's old fears that the Americans wanted to dismantle the country's nuclear arsenal and would violate their territory to do so.

Despite strained relations, the United States continues to work in Pakistan through the Department of Energy to help provide security for weapons and fissile material, explained Toby Dalton, co-director of the Carnegie Fund's Nuclear Policy Program.

But Pakistan is also nimble in its alliances. China, a longtime patron of Pakistan - both consider them to have "an interdependent relationship" - is investing heavily in the country's infrastructure.

China publicly stated that it is glad to see the Americans leave Afghanistan and that it is prepared to fill the void and expand its Belt and Road Initiative to Afghanistan, where it hopes to extract minerals.

However, in private, the Chinese are cautious. Some Chinese workers in Pakistan have been killed in terrorist attacks, which could herald difficulties in Afghanistan. Furthermore, the Taliban prefer being isolated to having roads and dams that could serve to weaken control over their population.

The director of International Security of the Asia Pacific Foundation in London, Sajjan Gohel, assured that China expects Pakistan to act as a moderator in Afghanistan.

"It seems that, thanks to their mutual ties with Pakistan, the Chinese are confident that they will be able to obtain greater security guarantees from the Taliban," Gohel said.