For decades, Pakistan’s policy towards Afghanistan has been shaped by military strategists who have thumped their chests over their “successes”: from the jihad against the Soviet Union, to the killing of Afghan nationalists and their replacement by Islamists in the 1990s, to backing the “good Taliban” as a strategic hedge against an India-friendly regime in Kabul. They told the Americans they could not control militants crossing into Afghanistan to fight the occupation because the border was porous and unmanned. They celebrated the Taliban’s “anti-imperialist” triumph, which also conveniently ended the myth of the dozen Indian consulates supposedly fomenting terrorism in Pashtun and Baloch territory. Yet the “Afghan problem” persists. If anything, violence has increased manifold since their return. And now our grand strategists are selling us another masterstroke: deport Afghans and bomb their country to pulp. Like every previous strategy, designed solely by “them,” this too is meant to deliver perpetual peace. There is, of course, no historical sensibility and no accountability for what these policymakers have produced over the past fifty years.